LOL this is absolutely comical. They don't even know where the shells are, but they're somewhere around the world!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47498159)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68550347

That will tide them over just fine til the Czech stuff starts arriving.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47498133)

How many artillery shells is Biden sending Ukraine in this package? Weird that they used always announce how many shells they were delivering in these military packages, but they've stopped announcing quantities in the past 9-6 months.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47498144)

Looks like Israel is getting all those shells.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47499038)

where were your grandparents born?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47499053)

1. The statement was not made by the President of Czechia.

2. "First deliveries from the so-called 'Czech ammunition initiative' can be expected in Ukraine in June ***at the latest***," National Security Adviser Tomas Pojar told Reuters."

Any reason why I should trust you when you lie in such trivial matters? You should just link me directly to @MyLordBebo and call it a day

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47499064)

He gave you a link, so how come you still haven't answered his question?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504461)

https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGI3-4zXXoAAjAGY.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47503676)

https://nitter.poast.org/tshevcom/status/1769685141201338849#m

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504404)

PRAGUE—Ukraine is about to receive large shipments of the ammunition it needs most. It won’t come from the U.S., or any other pillar of NATO.

Rather, the deal was clinched by a landlocked country of 10 million people sandwiched between Germany and Poland famed for its picturesque capital and the quality of its beer, but which was also home to a large arms industry.

The Czech Republic, once part of a Soviet satellite state and with little sympathy for Russia’s efforts to restore its lost empire, is one of Ukraine’s most ardent supporters. By activating relations dating back to the Cold War, it has sourced around 800,000 artillery shells from a diverse coalition of suppliers spanning the globe and identified another 700,000 that could be secured with extra funds.

The shells include 300,000 Soviet-standard shells and around 500,000 Western-made rounds, to be delivered in batches by the end of the year. More shells will be available as funding comes in, the Czech government said. Altogether, Czech officials say around 3 billion euros, equivalent to $3.3 billion, would secure around 1.5 million shells—a fraction of the $60 billion aid package for Ukraine now stranded in the U.S. congress.

The shipments, which Czech officials say could start reaching Ukraine within weeks, come as shortages of ammunition and troops are forcing Ukraine’s battered army to pull back in places faced with a Russian onslaught.

The Ukrainian forces are so depleted that they now only fire around two shells for every 10 Russia fires at them, according to Western intelligence estimates.

The Ukrainians aren’t running out of courage, but “they are running out of ammunition,” said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Russia, by contrast, having ramped up domestic manufacturing and tapped allies such as North Korea, Iran, and Belarus for supplies, is now both outgunning Ukraine on the battlefield and outproducing NATO.

Some military analysts say Ukraine needs up to 200,000 shells of various calibers each month to push back against the renewed onslaught. The supplies organized by the Czech Republic could help Ukraine’s defenders hold back Russia’s advance while the West slowly ramps up its own weapons production.

“The Czech initiative will help Ukraine stabilize the front and regain the upper hand,” said Nico Lange, former chief of the executive staff at the German defense ministry.

Czech officials behind the discreet procurement plan said their effort started shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago and largely circumvented the ponderous bureaucracies of NATO and the European Union.

Unlike the U.S., France or Germany, which mainly focused on ramping up domestic production to supply Ukraine, Czech officials said their initiative focused on sourcing existing materiel. Czech officials began quietly crisscrossing the globe, clinching sales deals and negotiating export licenses from scores of manufacturing nations.

The Czech officials said the country’s past as a Soviet satellite was an unexpected boon. It gifted the country both a substantial armaments industry with global customers and good relations with many nations in the Global South with large stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons and the capacity to produce more.

The officials are coy about where the shells are coming from but say suppliers include some allies of Russia. By contrast, similar entreaties by the U.S. and Western Europeans to potential suppliers in Africa, Asia and Latin America have been rebuffed, according to Western officials.

NATO and EU officials have publicly backed the Czech initiative in recent days. Germany has so far pledged over €500 million, which is by far the largest commitment of all participants, Czech officials said.

The Czech Republic’s approach was to act as a middleman, said Tomas Kopecny, the Czech special envoy for Ukraine who helped negotiate the deal. Prague approached nations it knew to have either manufacturing capacity or compatible ammunition in storage and connected them with a Western country that would place an order and pay for the shipment.

The Czech Republic would then organize the logistics, with shipments going either through its own borders or through third countries, blurring any direct link between the country of origin and Ukraine so as not to expose the supplier to Moscow’s ire.

“Confidentiality is key here: We talk and will talk to anyone, no matter what their allegiance or political stance is—with a very few exceptions, such as North Korea,” said Tomas Pojar, the Czech government’s national security adviser.

Prague’s efforts exposed a discrepancy between some governments’ friendly attitude to Russia in public and their openness to doing business with Ukraine’s allies in private, said Jan Jires, deputy minister of defense.

“If you come with a pile of money they are interested, and Czechia is seen as neutral compared with the U.S., which is often polarizing,” said Jakub Janda, head of the European Values Center for Security Policy, a Prague-based think tank, using an alternate English-language name for the country.

So far, the Czech Republic has secured funding for the first tranche of around 300,000 shells. Among the donors are Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark. The U.S. isn’t part of the buyers’ club at this stage.

“We are like hobbits—small and peaceful, but in a moment of crisis we jump to forge alliances with much more powerful countries and deliver results,” Kopecny said, referring to the diminutive heroes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” saga.

Kopecny, wearing socks depicting the Kremlin engulfed in flames, said the Czech Republic’s past as a Soviet satellite informed his country’s tough line on the war. Its government sees a Russian defeat in Ukraine as imperative and doesn’t believe in negotiating with President Vladimir Putin.

While larger Western powers such as the U.S. have debated the dangers of sending new types of weapons to Ukraine for fear of provoking Moscow, the Czech Republic began early on to deliver main battle tanks, rocket launchers and large artillery pieces to Kyiv. The launch vehicle for the missiles that sank Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva, was delivered by the Czech Republic.

“It was frustrating to see countries who are far wealthier and more powerful being inactive when it was a matter of life and death for Ukrainians, and by consequence also for us as well,” Kopecny said.

Lange said the success of the Czech initiative was a lesson for larger NATO members that have focused on ramping up their own weapons production, a slow process that is now constricting supplies for Ukraine.

U.S. production increases have been slowed by the budget impasse in Congress. America will have the capacity to produce nearly 70,000 shells a month by late 2024, rising to 80,000 a month by mid-2025, according to Doug Bush, the Army’s assistant secretary for acquisitions, logistics and technology.

European arms manufacturers are all increasing production, but due to regulation, supply-chain issues, a lack of government financing and a shortage of labor, a significant uptick in production isn’t expected until late next year or early 2026. In the EU, expanding an existing ammunition factory takes around two years, and erecting a new one around five, according to officials and industry representatives from several countries.

The failure of NATO allies to provide Ukraine with enough ammunition isn’t a question of capacity, but one of political will, NATO’s Stoltenberg told reporters Thursday.

The EU has said that its arms companies will be able to produce 1.4 million shells a year by the end of 2024 and two million in late 2025. Up to 50% of all EU defense production was being exported to third countries other than Ukraine until mid-2023, and EU officials have publicly called for defense companies to give priority to exports to Kyiv. The U.K., one of the world’s largest shell producers, also says its capacity to produce shells will have increased eightfold, by early 2025, from the levels before Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

By comparison, Russia, despite being under severe economic sanctions, is poised to start making nearly three times as much high-caliber ammunition as the U.S. and Europe this year, according to Western intelligence estimates. Russia’s overall artillery production, including rockets, will plateau at three million rounds a year, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

“Western initiatives have been hindered by…a desire to produce in Europe or the U.S. because countries wanted to combine supporting Ukraine with supporting their industries,” Jires said. “Which is a legitimate goal because we need to rearm ourselves but that’s not what’s needed for the immediate relief of Ukraine.”

Laurence Norman, Alistair MacDonald and Dan Michaels contributed to this article.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504457)

LMAO

Remember like last week when TDNW et al called anyone who was even remotely skeptical about these 800k materializing in the battlefield in the very near future a "fucking retard" and a "pathetic Putinmo" or whatever?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504459)

Btw, didn't you say you were retiring?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504466)

How many physical shells are being included in this new aid package that Biden just announced?

Also, I said I am returning to Semi-Retirement tomorrow if Drake and MASE retire. Maybe you don't read as gud as you think you do, Ari?

(NOTE: You don't have to take the time to reiterate that I'm a "fucking gay retard who is always wrong about everything" or whatever, we all already know that, you can just cite the number of shells and that will be sufficient to pwn me and we can leave it at that, my Liberal Jewish Pumo Friend.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504472)

So... you can't cite me an actual number of shells that will be shipped by Biden to the Ukraine as part of this aid package? Just "Trust me, it's going to be a lot, I am really smart and I know these things"? Weird how that's mocked as a retarded and pathetic response whenever I try and say something like that, but I'm always expected to nod and just be like "Huh yeah that's true huh wow fuck you got me there" whenever a Jewish Pumo like you smirks and drops that bomb on me.

Also, notwithstanding your assertion that "the US never releases those numbers for obvious reasons," I have actually been following this war pretty closely for more than two years now and I clearly remember many announcements being made back in 2022 / 2023 that included big scary hard numbers. Like this for example which I just found on Google in five seconds: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/us-provide-cluster-munitions-ukraine-rcna92852 ("The U.S. has a stockpile of roughly 10,000 cluster munitions in Europe that could be shipped to Ukraine almost immediately, the officials said.")

But you are correct in that I don't see any actual big hard scary numbers like this being cited anymore in connection with these (increasingly small and infrequent) aid packages.

Why is that? What changed in the last ~6 months or so?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504504)

OK, so it's CONFIRMED that we have a TON of shells sitting around that we could potentially give them. EXPERTS AGREE!

Relatedly, we also have a ton of weaponized nukes sitting around that we could potentially also give them. I won't even try and dispute that!

And so we circle around to my previous question: How many of those weapons are ACTUALLY BEING PHYSICALLY SHIPPED TO UKRAINE as part of this "aid package"?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504512)

The US would include total numbers of shells in each aide package for the first year or so of the war. Then they stopped. Why? 🤔

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504522)

I remember this too, odd case. We must both just be experiencing mass delusional psychosis, Ari The Pumo insists that never happened. ;)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504524)

Even though apparently it didn't really matter for the first ~1.5 years of the war? And then suddenly one day for no reason at all -- even as Russia was badly losing the war and running out of both ammo and men for the 10th time -- it suddenly started mattering?

Weird. What changed?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504535)

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03-21-23_dpicm_letter.pdf

I know you hate hearing that there are almost three million shells that Biden could give Ukraine, but these Republican members of Congress say it's the truth.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504540)

http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504512

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504544)

It's tiresome arguing with you as always- I've posted info which would lead a reasonable person to infer that Biden's most recent shipment of DPICMs was likely very helpful to Ukraine and will help tide them over til the Czech stuff starts arriving.

Continue arguing with yourself if you like.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504571)

What?

You're the one making an affirmative claim ("The US is about to send a bunch of shells to Ukraine"), and when I ask you how you know that you say "Because we have a lot of shells lying around the Senators said so" and then when I drill down further and ask you how you know that we're actually going to ship them over to Ukraine and how many we plan ship, you say "That's all classified information but trust me, it's happening and it's gonna be a lot, I know these things."

Yeah, sorry, you're correct I don't "trust" Jewish Pumos on XO in 2024 when they just invoke their own brilliance and secret knowledge as the basis for answering my questions.

Just one of my many crazy and totally irrational positions, along with being racist and antisemitic, I guess.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47504581)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47702865)

https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5534046&mc=1&forum_id=2

Mind you, drones dominate the battlefield now so just firing an artillery piece at all is risky and should not be done without a good target in mind. That alone will reduce the ideal expenditure of artillery shells.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47702889)

Recently, a Russian soldier pleaded on social media for pump shotguns to help stop the Ukrainian drones, saying “They’re simply burning through us.”

On the other side, up to 90 percent of wounded Ukrainian soldiers treated at stabilization points have been hit by an FPV drone or explosive dropped by a drone.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47702908)

drones complement artillery but nothing can replace a flying 100lb chunk of steel flying through the air that can’t be intercepted except by date and very expensive weapons that almost nobody has

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47702971)

oh, wait

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47704052)

A few thousand, 50-100 thousand, same thing pretty much. And that's apparently just from the Czech initiative alone.

Is it seriously possible for the discussion level on this board to deteriorate any further? Half the poasters are mongoloids who can't frame a more intelligent argument than "you're in X racial group" and most of the other half knowingly poast disinformation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47703209)

many of the original Z-tards fucked off, the ones that remain pro-rus are one of the above

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47703221)

“The first tens of thousands of 155 millimeter ammunitions will be delivered in June. Ukraine can expect the first shipment within the next days,” he added.

Hmmmmm.... So we've gone from 800,000 shells to be delivered in March, then April, changed to June, to now only tens of thousands possibly in June.

Also turns out that the majority of the shells Czechs purchased don't work or need to be repaired or some shit. It doesn't even dawn on you why, two plus years into the conflict, they're trying to come up with schemes to provide shells for Ukraine. Why didn't they do it a year ago? Two years ago?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5504857&forum_id=2#47703321)