United Kingdom increases arms production due to Ukraine

(Patria) - The United Kingdom has begun to expand its production lines to replace weapons sent to Ukraine and increase the production of artillery shells in an effort to help Kyiv push back Russian forces, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.

In an interview with Reuters in southwest England, where Ukrainian crews are being trained on Challenger-2 tanks, Wallace said he believed the UK was on track to help Ukraine, but that it needed to sustain the supply of weapons.

Asked if the UK had the commercial capacity to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons such as artillery shells, Wallace said: "We have signed contracts... We have already started to receive some deliveries for our own replenishment, and also some of that to Ukraine."

He said that in the past governments would look into their stockpiles and "dust them off" to see what was there, but now the game had changed with a "much more aggressive and dangerous Russia on the edges of Europe."

He said shells could be made fairly quickly, but "the key is to make sure that we place the orders, and we have started placing those orders over the last 10 months and that is starting to scale up those production lines."

"Absolutely part of the effort this year is sustainability – how we, the international community, can stimulate the supply chains, how we can stimulate our own supply chains for our own equipment and that has been one of the changes," he added.

Standing on a tank range surrounded by armored fighting vehicles and tanks, Wallace spoke to Ukrainian soldiers who were training to use British Challenger tanks, which the defense secretary said would arrive in Ukraine in the "spring."

The UK has already provided basic training in drone warfare to more than 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers and has been training tank crews since the end of January, part of what ministers say is evidence of the country's leading role in supporting Ukraine.