Ammo Shipments to Ukraine Arranged by Czechs on the Rise, Says Prague

Czech-arranged shipments of artillery ammunition to Ukraine are rising this year, the Defense Ministry in Prague said on Thursday.

As Ukraine suffered from a shortage of ammunition last year, the Czechs set up a team which has together with private companies searched for available ammunition stocks and new production around the world. 

The available ammunition batches are being offered to donor countries, which then pick which they want to finance. 

The program, which makes use of the Czechs’ traditional arms trading contacts, has been a flagship of the centre-right government’s international efforts to help Ukraine fight Russia’s aggression. It has also donated heavy equipment and other material worth hundreds of millions of euros. 

Director Aleš Vytečka of the defence ministry’s AMOS international cooperation agency said that so far this year, shipments totalled 850,000 shells, including 320,000 NATO artillery 155mm calibre projectiles. 

This compares with a 1.5 million total, including 500,000 155-mm shells, throughout 2024. 

Andrej Babiš, head of the Czech opposition ANO party that leads opinion polls ahead of an election in October, vowed to scrap the initiative if ANO returns to power, saying in a Reuters interview this week the programme was overpriced and untransparent. 

Vytečka rejected criticism of the drive, saying there was as much transparency as security concerns allowed. 

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“Clear and undeniable proof of the satisfaction of our partners is the fact that in 2025, donors’ contributions have significantly risen,” Vytečka said. 

So far this year, contributions have risen by 29% compared with the whole of 2024, he said without giving concrete sums, adding that countries raising their contributions included Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark. 

He said donor countries always decided for themselves which supplies and at what prices they would finance, and the offers were subject to audits in individual donor countries. 

The Czechs have mostly acted as an intermediary. The government said last year it allocated around 35 million euros for ammunition purchases from a Czech supplier.