President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel has announced that the country has purchased artillery ammunition for Ukraine.
According to Ceske Noviny, President Pavel stated last week that the Czech Republic has identified over a million units of ammunition that can be purchased for Ukraine from countries outside the EU. Earlier, he mentioned a figure of 800,000 units. He mentioned that efforts to find funding and partners for this purpose are ongoing.
"I think this reflects the fact that everyone is aware of a certain debt regarding the promised support to Ukraine when the European Union pledged to supply a million units by March of this year. Unfortunately, this did not happen," he said.
According to The Financial Times, the purchase of 800,000 units of ammunition is estimated to cost $1.5 billion (around UAH 60 billion).
Tomas Kopachny, the government agent for Ukraine's recovery, stated on Czech radio Plus that the purchase amount would be around three billion dollars.
"I cannot specify the exact amount because it primarily depends on price movements, it's the market, but roughly it's about twice as much as reported by the Financial Times, so about three billion dollars," Kopachny said.
Finance Minister Zbigniew Stanura stated today on Czech television that the Czech Republic's financial contribution to the purchase of ammunition would range from 500 million to one billion crowns.
"This is an amount that corresponds to the size of the Czech Republic and the indicators of the Czech economy," he added.