The EU has sent less than a third of the 1 million rounds of ammo it promised Ukraine, report says

• The EU pledged to send Ukraine one million rounds of ammunition by March 2024.
• But it has only sent 300,000 so far, an EU official told Politico Europe.

The European Union will likely fall short of sending the one million rounds of ammunition it pledged to Ukraine, an unnamed senior EU official told Politico Europe.

"It will be very difficult to reach" the figure in time for the bloc's March 2024 target date, the source told the outlet.

Politico's report said that EU countries had sent 300,000, less than a third of their promise.

Other European and Ukrainian senior officials drew the same conclusion this week after Bloomberg reported that the EU was "very unlikely" to hit its 1 million rounds target by March.

Germany's Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters that hitting the one million-round target now seems out of reach, per The Guardian.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, made the same assessment on Monday, according to European Pravda.

The outlet said Kuleba attributed that to the limitations of Europe's defense manufacturers, rather than a lack of enthusiasm.

The unnamed EU source echoed Kuleba's statement, saying that the EU's main problem was its production capacity, per Politico Europe.

European top manufacturers have struggled to keep pace with Ukraine's daily ammunition consumption, estimated at 6,000–7,000 by Estonia's defense ministry.

This, in turn, means Ukraine has struggled to keep up with Russia's firing rate of 20,000 to 60,000 per day at the height of its barrages this year, the outlet reported.

Admiral Rob Bauer of the Netherlands, who chairs NATO's Military Committee, had warned last month that Western supplies were at "the bottom of the barrel."

"We give away weapons systems to Ukraine, which is great, and ammunition, but not from full warehouses," Bauer said, per CNN.