Ukraine Ammunition Coalition Shrinks as Nine Countries Pull Funding

The Czech-led initiative that has supplied Ukraine with more than four million large-calibre artillery shells since 2024 has lost half its contributors since December, raising serious questions about the sustainability of one of Kyiv’s most significant ammunition pipelines.

Czech President Petr Pavel, a former NATO general and one of the initiative’s strongest backers, has warned that the project is under strain — and that no easy replacement exists. The Financial Times reports that the number of countries actively funding the coalition has fallen from as many as 18 last year to around nine today.

How Ukraine Ammunition Coalition Unravelled

The timing is not coincidental. The sharp drop in participation coincides with the return to power of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in December, who campaigned on a pledge not to spend Czech public money on weapons for Ukraine. While Babiš has stopped short of shutting the initiative down entirely — as he threatened during last year’s election campaign — his government left it in limbo for several months after taking office over what Czechoslovak Group chief executive Michal Strnad described as unresolved legal issues.

Babiš told the FT his administration was prioritising household energy costs in the aftermath of the Iran conflict over support for Ukraine. “We don’t have money, so we are receiving money from other countries and then we deliver,” he said — framing the Czech role as logistical rather than financial.

Pavel was blunt about the initiative’s importance to Ukraine’s battlefield capacity. “This initiative has been delivering up to 50 percent of all large calibre ammunition to the Ukrainians, so in this sense it cannot be replaced easily by anything else,” he told the FT.

Since its launch by the previous pro-EU Czech government, the coalition has sourced and delivered more than four million large-calibre artillery shells to Kyiv, helping to sustain Ukraine’s defence as its stockpiles came under severe pressure. The mechanism relies on the Czechoslovak Group, one of Europe’s largest ammunition producers, as its main corporate partner — sourcing shells and recommissioning stocks from non-NATO countries on behalf of Ukraine’s western backers.

Burden-Sharing Tensions

The withdrawal of roughly half the coalition’s members has exposed deeper tensions over who bears the cost of supporting Ukraine. A western military official told the FT that Germany and some Nordic nations remain among the participants, but noted that “some countries now feel that it is strange to pay for something that is not even properly supported by the ruling politicians of the lead country” — a pointed reference to Babiš’s posture.

Strnad said some departing countries had not abandoned Ukraine’s ammunition supply altogether but had shifted to buying directly from CSG or alternative suppliers rather than routing funds through the coalition. The initiative, he said, is “not dead, it’s still working, but it’s a bit slow.”

Pavel has called for the coalition’s future to be placed on the agenda at the NATO summit in Ankara in July.