France will double the amount of 155-mm ammunition it supplies to Ukraine. The Armed Forces of Ukraine will receive two thousand shells monthly.

Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces, announced this in an interview with the French publication Le Figaro.

“We are doubling the supply of 155-mm shells to bring their number up to 2,000 per month from the end of March,” he said in an interview.

Currently, the 155 mm shells fired by Allied-provided artillery fire thousands of shells daily.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Guardian about the extremely intensive expenditure of ammunition by the Ukrainian and Russian military.

“At present, the combat was so intense that Ukraine’s use of artillery shells was 4,000 to 7,000 a day to Russia’s 20,000,” Stoltenberg noted.

Also in February, Stoltenberg warned that Ukraine was using more ammunition than the Alliance could produce, putting “pressure” on Western defense stocks and industry. Since then, the European Union has decided to allocate two billion euros to supply one million shells to Ukraine.

Defense policy of France

On Tuesday, March 28, President Emmanuel Macron is expected to gather defense industrialists at the Elysee Palace for the first time to take stock of the transition of France’s military-industrial complex to the rails of the “war economy” he is calling for.

Manufacturers of defense products were recommended to increase their production capacity and shorten delivery times. For example, the company Nexter, which produces 155-mm shells in France, plans to increase its capacity to produce 150,000 shells annually in 2025. This is three times more than before the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

According to Sébastien Lecornu, Paris should also “very soon” deliver the promised SAMP/T air defense system to Ukraine, “the cost of which is several hundred million euros.”

An increase in the support fund is also being discussed, at the expense of which Ukraine would be able to purchase equipment from French manufacturers.

“Together with Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, we are studying the replenishment of the support fund for Ukraine, which the presidential majority in the National Assembly wants, from which 200 million have been fully allocated,” Lecornu added.