The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has added to its growing list of military aid to Ukraine for 2024 with a promise to spend £245m ($310.7m) to procure “urgently needed” and domestically produced munitions throughout the next year to increase the nation’s ammunition.
Ukraine has been noted for its highly effective use of artillery to conduct counter-battery fire – using drones and UK-supplied radar systems to quickly identify the locations of active Russian artillery and rapidly return fire to destroy them.
This latest commitment will produce munitions to boost Ukraine’s reserves. This comes after the UK Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, in an update to Parliament on Thursday, confirmed delivery of an additional 200 Brimstone anti-tank missiles to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, bringing the total number of Brimstone provided to Ukraine to more than 1,300.
In the past two years, the UK has also supplied modern, Western tanks in the form of Challenger 2 and it was the first country to provide long-range precision strike missiles in the form of the Storm Shadow/SCALP.
In addition to bolstering Ukraine’s munition stocks, the MoD also extended this package of support with a new multi-million pound series of contracts signed between the MoD’s procurement arm, Defence Equipment & Support and UK-based Cook Defence Systems. The supplier will provide hundreds of spare caterpillar tracks for tanks and armoured vehicles.
Tracks will be produced to support hundreds of types of vehicle including Soviet-era platforms abandoned by Russian forces and recovered by the AFU, as well as those provided by the UK such as Challenger 2 tanks and CVR(T) reconnaissance vehicles.
Western commitment wavers
Although the current US Government has expressed its unwavering support for Ukraine with aid adding up to a value of $47bn since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, future American support is dwindling with the prospect of a change of government in Washington later this year.
The UK and the rest of Europe are preparing for such a circumstance. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen underscored the EU’s emboldened Ukraine policy on the 24 February 2024, when she commented:
“We have now our €50bn ($54.2bn) Ukraine Facility. This is on top of €88bn that we have delivered so far since the start of the war. The first payment of €4.5bn will come in March [2024].”
Despite Ukraine’s successes in this war of attrition, Shapps observed that “they cannot win this fight without the support of the international community – and that’s why we continue to do what it takes to ensure Ukraine can continue to fight towards victory.”
