Germany will finally send its own Leopard tanks to Ukraine and will also authorize third countries that have these German-made tanks to do so, according to the weekly Der Spiegel tonight and corroborated by the NTV television network.
The government of Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz thus yields to the intense pressure of a good number of allied countries, but it does so after reaching an agreement with the United States so that American Abrams tanks are also dispatched to Kyiv, so that it is recorded as a joint supply operation of heavy tanks to the Ukrainian army. Washington is finishing its evaluation of this option.
According to the German public channel ZDF, Scholz will explain the decision this Wednesday at one in the afternoon in the Bundestag (Lower House of Parliament), within a routine questioning session that was previously scheduled. But tonight there was no official confirmation about it. Der Spiegel assured that Germany will deliver to Kyiv “at least one company of Leopard 2 A6s”, that is, the equivalent of fourteen tanks. It is the same number of Leopard cars that Poland wants to supply, one of the countries that has put the most pressure on Germany.
Poland has been insisting for days on the urgency of sending at least a hundred heavy tanks to Ukraine. This figure comes from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank, which estimates that a minimum of 100 tanks are needed to conclusively influence the battlefield. If at least eight countries give up one company each, that number would be reached. There are 19 nations – including Spain – that have variants of the German tank.
Warsaw had formalized this Tuesday morning the official request for permission to Berlin to be able to re-export its Leopards, after the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, launched a clear challenge to Scholz, threatening to forge a small coalition of countries that would supply the tanks. Volodimir Zelensky even without German authorization. Legally, any new sale of German weapons to another country by the first purchasing country must be approved by the German government.
A small coalition without German participation or an American presence would have been unacceptable as a scene of disunity before Vladimir Putin; precisely this Tuesday marked eleven months since the start of the Russian invasion. In the morning, at a press conference with the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, who was visiting Berlin, the German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, gave the green light for the countries concerned to instruct the Ukrainian military in the handling of the Leopard 2, the model desired by Volodímir Zelenski.
Leopards are considered a fundamental element for the Ukrainian army due to their mobility, armor and firepower characteristics, as well as the logistical advantage for transportation, as they are found in several European armies. Kyiv craves these tanks to break through the Russian ranks and try to recover occupied territory, and also to defend itself from the offensive that Vladimir Putin could be preparing for the spring.
As a contributing factor to the unlocking of the Leopards, the United States now plans to send between 30 and 50 of its M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine and will officially announce the delivery on Wednesday, according to mainstream US media.
The Biden Administration had been reluctant to send its powerful tanks to Ukraine. “The Abrams is very complicated and expensive,” and instruction in operating it “difficult,” Defense Department undersecretary for policy Colin Kahl said recently. “I think these vehicles consume three gallons per mile (7 liters per kilometer) of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain.” And he concluded: “It may or may not be the right system. But we will continue to see what makes sense.” The Pentagon also argued that, due to the difficulty involved in sending its Abrams to Ukraine and putting it into operation, the most operative would be the transfer of Leopards already present on European soil.