It recently became known that some of the shells supplied to Ukraine by the West turned out to be faulty.
Some of them, with detonators developed during World War II, exploded prematurely.
As a result of these incidents, Ukrainian soldiers were injured and artillery systems were damaged.
Czech initiative
This was reported by MIA "Russia Today" with reference to the publication Handelsblatt, which in turn refers to the report of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It is alleged that the weapons in question were supplied to Kyiv as part of the Czech initiative, as well as by the United States.
The Czech initiative is a project to purchase hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds from third countries for Ukraine.
Its author is the President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel, who first voiced the idea at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February of this year.
According to the Handelsblatt publication, “during the combat use of artillery, numerous shell explosions occurred at a distance of 20 to 60 meters from the nozzle.”
This resulted in injuries to soldiers and damage to artillery systems.
Exploded prematurely
The report cites M515 and M51A5 detonators, developed during World War II, as the cause of the emergency.
According to representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, out of almost 35,000 delivered artillery shells, 0.05% were defective.
In other words, out of every 10,000 rounds fired, five exploded prematurely, the article notes.
And it goes on to state: back in August, the Ukrainian Armed Forces command notified Prague of the malfunction.
The Czech Ministry of Defence confirmed the presence of defects in the delivered batch and informed about the solution to this problem.
