According to Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský (Pirates), the Czech Republic has received money from its allies for the purchase of the first 300,000 pieces of ammunition for its initiative to purchase ammunition for Ukraine, which is facing Russian military aggression, and another half a million pieces are in question.
Fiala pointed out that the government accepted the amount of the Czech contribution in secret. According to him, the higher hundreds of millions of crowns “roughly correspond to the share that a country of our size and prosperity should invest in these things”.
The prime minister also said he may consider asking the government to allow the exact amount to be published. However, according to him, taking the decision on the amount in secret was the right thing to do. “It’s about safety stuff and it’s about risk for a lot of people who deal with those things,” he pointed out.
Lipavský: More money is needed to buy ammunition for Kyiv
The war in Ukraine
Among others, Canada, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Iceland and Slovenia signed up to the initiative.
They publish their contributions gradually, in total and in conversion they amount to approximately 35 billion crowns. This corresponds to the estimate of the British newspaper Financial Times, which wrote at the end of February that the purchase announced by the Czech Republic should come to 1.5 billion dollars (about 35 billion CZK).
Lipavský told journalists in Brussels that more money is needed for the Czech initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine.
The Ministry of Defense answered a question from the Seznam Zprávy server that roughly 500,000 pieces of artillery ammunition can be purchased from the money promised so far for the Czech initiative.
The proposal to purchase artillery ammunition for Ukraine in countries outside the European Union was presented by Fiala at an extraordinary EU summit in early February.
President Petr Pavel later informed the Munich Security Conference about the possibility of purchasing 800,000 grenades for Ukrainians in third countries – half a million pieces of 155 millimeter caliber and 300,000 pieces of 122 millimeter caliber.
At the beginning of February, the Brussels website Politico wrote that the Czech Republic is interested in ammunition from arms companies in, for example, South Korea, Turkey or the Republic of South Africa.
Fiala: I understood the discussion about the nomination of the European Commissioner to mean that he would be proposed by STAN
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Tags: Fiala Czech Republic give hundreds millions purchase ammunition Ukraine
