Ukraine will receive Leopard 2 tanks, it was officially announced after a meeting in Lviv between the presidents of Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania – Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Andrzej Duda, and Gitanas Nausėdas.
According to the Office of the Polish President: “Ukraine will receive a company of Leopard tanks as part of an international coalition. This decision has already been made by Poland”.
It should be noted that a company of tanks is 10 vehicles. And this is the number of Leopard 2s that Warsaw considered to be quite realistic for the transfer. As well as the fact that these vehicles will be delivered to Ukraine through the efforts of a number of countries that are operators of these vehicles, that is, in a “fold”.
It should be noted that this scenario was the most realistic, given that the transfer of a notional hundred vehicles was not feasible for each individual country. It would have meant transferring either almost all of the available vehicles in service, as in the case of Finland or Sweden, or half of the stocks, as in the case of Spain, Germany or Poland. And even the number of 100 Leopard 2s is much higher than the number of tanks in service, for example, in Denmark (44 tanks) or Norway (36 tanks).
At the same time, the collective transfer means a much smaller burden for each country, each of which can transfer a relatively small number, but together will form a significant resource. It should be noted that even if we do not take into account the possibility of transferring Leopard 2 tanks from Austria, Greece, Turkey, and Hungary, we are still talking about several hundred in reserve and more than 1,100 in service.
Currently, there is no exact information on the list of countries that will receive Leopard 2s, nor on the timing or specific types of Leopard 2s. It should also be noted that Poland’s decision could not have been made without a positive response from Berlin regarding the transfer of these vehicles to Ukraine.
Source: DEFENSE EXPRESS
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