The European Union said Friday it will drastically increase ammunition production this year in response to Ukraine’s growing pleas for firepower as three Baltic members agreed to build new defenses on their borders with Belarus and Russia due to security concerns.

The EU will be able to churn out at least 1.3 million rounds of ammunition by the end of this year, EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said on a visit to Estonia.

Breton said that by March or April the 27 EU nations would reach a production capacity target for one million ammunition shells each year.

“We need to make sure that most of this is coming to Ukraine in priority. Because this is where there is an urgent need,” he said.

Ukraine said on Thursday that it faced a “pressing” need for ammunition and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday made a call for greater efforts to stop Russia sourcing weapons parts for its offensive.

“The West must get serious about strangling Russia’s ability to produce weapons,” Kuleba said in a social media post.

“According to some data, up to 95 percent of the foreign-produced critical components found in Russian weapons destroyed in Ukraine come from Western countries,” he added.

Kuleba did not provide evidence for the claim, but Kyiv regularly disassembles Russian missiles and drones that fall on its territory to analyze their components.

Meanwhile, ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed an agreement in Riga for the construction of anti-mobility defensive installations in the coming years to deter and, if necessary, defend against military threats, the Estonian defense ministry said in a statement.

The installations would be on the borders with Russia and Belarus. Latvia and Lithuania border both countries while Estonia only borders Russia.

The statement did not provide details on the installations.

The Baltic states — all former Soviet republics and now members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union — have been staunch supporters of Ukraine from day one of the invasion nearly two years ago.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown that, in addition to equipment, ammunition, and manpower, physical defensive installations on the border are also needed,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said, quoted in the statement.

His Latvian counterpart Andris Spruds also announced the project.

“We will establish the Baltic Defense Line to defend NATO’s Eastern flank and deny freedom of movement for our adversaries,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

WITH AFP