Albares assures that there is a “consensus” on the urgent supply of ammunition for Ukraine
By Silvia Ayuso from Brussels. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has assured in Brussels that there is a broad “consensus” on the need to supply ammunition to Ukraine as soon as possible, although he has indicated that it has not yet been decided how to do it or how to finance it.
“There is a consensus on the importance of continuing to supply, as a matter of urgency, military material and, specifically, ammunition” to Ukraine, Albares told journalists at the end of the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, in which the The main issue to be discussed was precisely how to speed up the supply of ammunition to Ukraine, especially the 155-millimeter caliber that Kiev has requested.
According to the head of Spanish diplomacy, the high representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, has formally presented the Estonian proposal for a joint purchase of arms, starting with ammunition worth up to 4,000 million euros, through a system inspired by the joint purchase platform for covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
Although during the “political” debate this Monday in Brussels -the defense ministers should also discuss it, probably at their meeting at the beginning of March in Stockholm- not all countries have spoken, “the majority” have declared themselves in favor of the joint purchase of weapons and, above all, “nobody has spoken against it”, indicated Albares, who made it clear that the Twenty-seven want to leave all options open and that although there is awareness that “advance quickly”, no deadlines have yet been set.
“We are going to explore different instruments within our reach, including the joint purchase route that Estonia has put on the table,” he declared in this regard. In the case of Spain, he has pointed out, “we do not have a proposal that we prefer over another, we measure it by its effectiveness and that (the instrument adopted to finance munitions) allows for European unity.”
