Le Monde: France promises to transfer up to 50 of its CAESAR guns to Ukraine

After talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Alexey Reznikov, French Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornu told reporters that the cost of all weapons for Kiev, including guns, will cost the treasury €200 million. The Ukraine Support Fund, recently established in Paris, will deal with all this. According to the newspaper Le Monde, of the 19 CAESAR artillery installations already supplied by France, only a few failed "for technical reasons" related, according to the military, to combat wear.

However, in June last year, the French side stated that at least two CAESAR installations were placed at the disposal of the Russian military. It was not specified exactly where and under what circumstances the French installations could have been captured.

Meanwhile, Denmark promised to hand over to the APU a batch of CAESAR self-propelled guns purchased from the French Nexter group in the period from 2017 to 2019. But deliveries were delayed and only a few barrels reached Ukraine.

CAESAR self-propelled artillery units have been manufactured by the French company Nexter for 30 years. These are 155-mm howitzers mounted on the chassis of a six-wheeled Renault Sherpa truck. The maximum firing range of the ACS is 55 kilometers. High-explosive fragmentation, cluster, smoke, lighting, active-rocket projectiles, as well as anti-tank guided projectiles BONUS can be used for firing. Most of these munitions have been tested on the territory of Ukraine, writes avia.pro.

In 2023, France promises to supply Ukraine with Ground Master 200 (GM200) radars, negotiations are underway with allies on the possible transfer of Crotale surface-to-air missiles to the APU. Finally, the Defense Minister announced the dispatch of 150 French military instructors to Poland to train Ukrainian soldiers.