After the White House agreed with South Korea to supply ammunition to Ukraine, Seoul has become one of the largest suppliers of shells to Kyiv. This is stated in the article of the Washington Post, reports UNN.
Details
On the eve of Ukraine's counteroffensive in 2023, the United States was preparing a plan for military assistance to Kyiv. During discussions of this plan, the Pentagon estimated that Kyiv needed more than 90,000 rounds of ammunition per month. Since the United States could not provide such a level of shell production at that time, Washington began to look for alternative options.
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South Korea had huge stockpiles of weapons, but according to the laws of this country, it could not transfer weapons to the war zone. At the same time, the Pentagon knew that if they could persuade Seoul, they could transfer about 330,000 155-mm shells from South Korea in 40 days.
Senior U.S. administration officials spoke to their counterparts in Seoul, who agreed, provided the shipments were routed through a detour
Eventually, the delivery of the missiles began in early 2023. Thus, according to The Washington Post, South Korea has sent more artillery shells to Ukraine than all European countries combined.
Supplement
It is noted that there was another alternative to supplying Ukraine with shells - American DPICM cluster munitions . The Pentagon had thousands of them, gathering dust for decades, but Secretary of State Anthony Blinken refused, The Washington Post notes.
In the end, the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine was agreed upon by the US only in the summer, after the first results of the counteroffensive. In particular, on July 14 , Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavsky said that the long-awaited American-made cluster munitions had already been delivered to Ukraine.
As a reminder,
the European Union is going to produce more than million rounds of ammunition annually as part of its commitments to Ukraine. Currently, the work on proposals for orders is being finalized.