MOSCOW, January 15. /TASS/. The West's failure to deliver one million shells to Kiev is an extremely alarming signal, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Alexey Danilov said.

"The situation with a million of shells for Ukraine is a litmus test of the readiness of Western national economies to meet military challenges. The results of the test are extremely alarming," he wrote on his Facebook (a social media site banned in Russia since it is owned by Meta corporation deemed extremist by the Russian authorities).

Danilov pointed out that the European Union, the United States and other countries "face the need to make decisions <...> on the urgent return of the issue of military security to the priority agenda." "The world is once again returning to the state of needing to be ready for the hot phase of war, and this requires a modern army, the latest weapons and trained soldiers," he said.

In March 2023, EU countries approved a plan to transfer one million artillery shells to Kiev over the next 12 months. However, on January 11, 2024, European Commission representatives Johanna Bernsel and Peter Stano said at a press conference in Brussels that the EU intends to produce one million shells a year, but will not be able to deliver that many to Kiev. According to Stano, the promise to deliver one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine was a "political goal." At the same time, he said that the EU has so far delivered 300,000 rounds of ammunition to Kiev.