(Bloomberg) -- Slovakia’s defense minister is pushing for a major boost to ammunition production. Yet while his government steadfastly refuses to arm Ukraine, Slovak-made shells are ending up there.
The central European country aims to increase production of large caliber ammunition shells to 200,000 next year from 125,000 expected this year, said Robert Kalinak, defense minister and a close ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico.
But the government doesn’t have complete control over where the shells end up as it is up to buyers to decide what to do with the ammunition they bought, according to the minister.
Kalinak denied that the sale of Slovak-made shells to Ukraine either directly or through third parties contradicts the position of the government, which opposes military aid to Kyiv.
It is a position which makes Slovakia, along with fellow NATO member Hungary, an outlier on the alliance’s eastern flank.
“Our political declaration states that we won’t give free military aid to Ukraine, because by doing that we would be supporting the conflict,” Kalinak, 53, said in an interview. “But we won’t limit defense production when it supports gross domestic product, because by doing that, I’d be harming the interests of Slovakia.”
The defense industry should contribute about 2% to the nation’s economic growth this year, according to the minister. It’s a chance to improve Slovakia’s economy and public finances, he said.
“From a historic point of view, this is the way that I very much want to take,” he said in Dubnica nad Vahom, a town in western Slovakia which is home to an ammunition and arms-making plant. “The defense industry is one with high added value.”
Kalinak came to the spotlight earlier this year when he stood in for Slovak prime minister after the latter was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in May. Fico returned to work earlier this month.
“He certainly sees life from a different angle now,” Kalinak said of Fico after his recovery. “I think he realizes, and we all know that too, that every word he says carries ten times more weight than ever before.”
An Ammunition Renaissance
Dubnica nad Vahom, where Kalinak spoke on Thursday, is one of a handful of towns around Slovakia which once housed vast ammunition plants supplying the armies of the Warsaw Pact.
The collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet-led military alliance nearly eliminated the biggest arms producers in what was then the eastern part of Czechoslovakia.
In the early 1990s, production dropped by 90%, leaving tens of thousands of people jobless and the sprawling abandoned arms factories monuments to the sector’s demise.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with which Slovakia shares a 97-kilometer (60 mile) border, has rekindled interest in the arms industry and prompted Slovak companies to try to boost production.
The increase in production projected by Kalinak compares with about 20,000 rounds of 155mm shells anually before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
When Fico’s cabinet came to power last October, it said it would inject €100 million ($109 million) into revitalizing the industry that also produces howitzers and mortars. Now Kalinak is thinking ahead and would like Slovak companies to be involved at every step of the supply chain for ammunition production. That goal will take years to achieve, he said without elaborating.
Fico’s government halted direct military supplies to Ukraine from its own stocks. His predecessors sent ammunition, tanks, S-300 and even a fleet of MiG-29 jets to Ukraine. However, at the same time Fico said that his government would not block supplies of weapons and ammunition from private manufacturers.
Former Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said that the vast majority of production from Slovak factories manufacturing 155mm ammunition goes to Ukraine.
“In 2023, practically the entire production capacity for the next three years was sold out to Ukraine, either directly or through other countries,” he said.
While that move has helped Kyiv replenish its ammunition stocks, Slovakia remains highly skeptical of welcoming Ukraine further into the western fold.
Fico strongly opposes Ukraine’s membership in NATO, even though Slovakia signed a declaration at the NATO summit in Washington which envisages a future for Ukraine within the alliance.
The Slovak government will never vote for Ukraine’s entry into NATO if such a motion is tabled, said the defense minister.
“Voters in Slovakia said they want to follow our view that we presented in the elections and that is putting Slovakia and not Ukraine or Russia first,” Kalinak said.
“I can’t imagine Ukraine’s entry into NATO, because Ukraine will never change its borders. It won’t ever share borders with Germany or Switzerland, it will always have Russia as its neighbor,” said the minister.
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