The UK government announced on 24 February 2024 that it will spend GBP 245 million (EUR 286 million) throughout the next year to procure and invigorate supply chains to produce urgently needed artillery ammunition for Ukraine.
The announcement, which came exactly two years to the day since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine – noted that artillery has proved critical to Ukraine’s battlefield successes, continuously degrading Russian forces and preventing them from making significant breakthroughs.
“Ukraine has been particularly noted for its highly effective use of its artillery to conduct counter-battery fire – using drones and UK-supplied radar systems to quickly identify the locations of active Russian artillery and rapidly return fire to destroy them,” the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) noted in a press release.
“The UK has been leading international support for the armed forces of Ukraine (AFU) for 10 years since Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014, training more than 60,000 new recruits since 2015 and committing almost GBP 12 billion in economic, humanitarian and military aid since 2022,” the MoD added.
In an update to parliament on 22 February UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed the delivery of an additional 200 Brimstone anti-tank missiles to the AFU, bringing the total number of Brimstone provided to Ukraine to more than 1,300. The MoD noted that this further builds on the country’s leading support for Ukraine; the UK was the first country to announce it would provide Ukraine with modern, Western armour in the form of Challenger 2 main battle tanks (MBTs) and was the first country to provide long-range precision strike capabilities in the form of Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles.
Further to the artillery funding and missiles package, a new multi-million-pound series of contracts has been signed between the MoD’s procurement arm, the Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) organisation, and UK-based Cook Defence Systems to provide hundreds of spare caterpillar tracks for tanks and armoured vehicles. These will allow the AFU to recover and restore vehicles damaged by anti-tank weapons and land mines. The contracts will involve a mixture of UK funding and funds from the International Fund for Ukraine.
On 15 February Shapps announced that the UK will co-lead an international capability coalition to supply cutting-edge unmanned aerial vehicles to Ukraine alongside Latvia, in addition to the UK’s co-leadership of the international Maritime Capability Coalition supporting Ukraine, which was announced in December 2023.
During meetings this month with counterparts at NATO headquarters in Brussels and at the Munich Security Conference, Shapps urged partners and allies to commit to long-term support for Ukraine, the MoD press release added.
The UK Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, was quoted by the MoD as saying, “During the past two years the Armed Forces of Ukraine have become one of the largest, most capable and respected fighting forces in the world. They have presided over extraordinary feats of operational and strategic success, from repelling Russian forces on the outskirts of Kyiv in the opening stages of the war to the spectacular and ongoing campaign in the Black Sea.
“Today the Russian Army has lost half the territory it seized, over 350,000 men killed or wounded, thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and armoured fighting vehicles; the Russian Fleet has been driven from Crimea and Ukraine’s maritime exports are returning to pre-war levels. Russia is failing in all of its strategic objectives to subjugate Ukraine and challenge NATO,” the CDS added.
“If we maintain the unity and cohesion we’ve seen to date, and keep strongly supporting our brave Ukrainian partners – militarily, economically and diplomatically – Russia will continue to fail and Ukraine will build the foundations to flourish as a strong, prosperous and sovereign nation. And NATO continues to get even stronger.”
