NATO chief: Ukraine consuming enormous amount of munitions, depleting allied stockpiles

The secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) says Ukraine's Western allies are having a hard time keeping up with Kiev's ever-increasing demand for ammunition to be used in its war with Russia.

"The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting allied stockpiles," Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday.

"The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain," the NATO chief added.

His remarks came as the West has been pumping Ukraine full of billions of dollars worth of military hardware since last February, when the war started.

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Stoltenberg admitted that the military alliance is lagging behind in its efforts to keep feeding the weapons the West has donated to Ukraine with the projectiles they need, as waiting times for large-caliber ammunition has grown from 12 to 28 months.

It is not immediately clear how much munition exactly the Ukrainian armed forces have spent over the past months, but a French military source estimated that the Ukrainians fired some 6,000 artillery shells a day in the month of July.

Kiev has been asking for even more projectiles since the end of August, when it stepped up its military push against Moscow.

The Russian military is, meanwhile, said to be gearing up for a fresh offensive, which is expected to put Ukraine in a position, where it would need more munitions.

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Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has successfully pressed the country's Western allies into providing it with battle tanks. Most recently, he came up with a demand for warplanes, but failed to secure a decisive answer to the request from his allies.

A French government source, however, said, "Before even speaking about jets and tanks, let's first try to best ensure customer service for those weapons we have already delivered."

The United States, which has outdone all the other allies in terms of supplying Ukraine with weapons, has delivered 1,600 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and 8,500 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev. That's the equivalent of 13 years of production for the Stingers, and five years of work for the Javelins, the head of US defense firm Raytheon Technologies, Greg Hayes, warned in December.

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With no diplomatic solution to the deadly conflict in sight, the situation has been exacerbated by the fracture among western countries on how to assist Kiev militarily.

The company would not be capable of producing more than a few hundred Javelins even if it teamed up with fellow arms company, Lockheed Martin.

The Western military industry "is not ready for war," said William Alberque, an expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"Our defense industry -- ammunition, logistics, supplies, training -- is wholly inadequate to the task," he said, adding that the West was not ready for longer conflicts and needed a better "defense industrial plan." 

Ivan Klyszcz, a research fellow at the Estonia-based International Center for Defense and Security, said Ukraine's allies had to seek "solutions...from abroad." "Everything else will take months and months," he added.

The West's race to make sure that Ukraine is armed to the teeth against Russia comes while Moscow has warned that Kiev's further armament would only lead to prolongation of the already drawn-out conflict.

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