At present, 2024 will be a testing year for Zelensky. In January this year, Ukraine received only one aid from the West, which is Japan. Now, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues, the United States has kicked off again, and Ukraine's American aid has not yet landed, which has to worry Zelensky.
However, the EU's actions seem to be able to give Zelensky a little relief.
According to Xinhua News Agency on February 1, European Council President Charles Michel announced on the same day that the European Union has reached an agreement to provide Ukraine with an additional 50 billion euros in aid. For Ukraine, the EU's decision can be described as a relief in the snow, and U**Zelensky also said excitedly that the EU's continuous assistance is no less than sanctions against Russia and military aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine's economy has been devastated by the war, and Ukraine is particularly dependent on Western "blood transfusions" to maintain economic and financial stability. However, according to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, this "huge money" from the EU is mainly used in the Ukrainian state budget. The war is still burning, the Ukrainian army is still fighting on the front line, and the Ukrainian side needs not only financial support, but also military assistance, especially ammunition support.
However, the EU directly acknowledges that it is not in a position to deliver the ammunition in a timely manner.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said on January 31 that the EU could not deliver 1 million shells by March and could only deliver about 52 percent of the shells, Xinhua news agency reported.
With the intensity of the war on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, 1 million artillery shells is not much, and the Ukrainian army consumes thousands of 155mm artillery shells every day. The EU has not wavered in the line of "aiding Ukraine to resist Russia", and the EU is still quite concerned about supporting Ukraine, but the EU is quite weak in military assistance.
Prior to this, in order to support Ukraine, many countries in the European Union were about to empty their stocks, and in the context of the United States almost cutting off supplies to Ukraine, the EU can only find ways to expand its military production capacity to support the supply of the Ukrainian army.
It should be said that some countries in the European Union actually intend to use the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to strengthen their own strength, Macron used the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as an excuse to try to push French workers to switch to a wartime economic model, Poland actively "recruited", and Germany seems to be openly embarking on the road of "remilitarization", according to Xinhua News Agency reported in December last year, Germany's arms exports in 2023 hit a new high.
But the problem is that affected by the energy crisis, the EU has faced the dilemma of "deindustrialization", and Macron specially urged many French military industries to increase production and growth, but it still cannot make the EU achieve the established goal of aiding Ukraine. For the EU, the premise of increasing military production is to solve the manufacturing crisis.