{"id":264669,"date":"2023-02-05T08:35:27","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T08:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264669"},"modified":"2023-02-06T08:40:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T08:40:43","slug":"germany-to-send-88-leopard-i-tanks-to-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264669","title":{"rendered":"Germany to send 88 Leopard I tanks to Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicolas Gamut \u2013 Politico Feb 3, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>The German government has approved the delivery by a private arms-maker of its old Leopard 1 tanks to Kyiv,\u00a0a government spokesperson said Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can confirm that an export license has been issued\u201d\u00a0for the Leopard 1 tanks,\u00a0government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said\u00a0at a press briefing, without confirming specific numbers.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Friday,\u00a0S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Berlin had approved\u00a0German arms-maker Rheinmetall\u2019s plans to sell\u00a088\u00a0of the older Leopards to Kyiv, once these are repaired, for a total cost of more than \u20ac100 million.<\/p>\n

The move further signals a reversal of Berlin\u2019s policy on tanks for Ukraine,\u00a0nine days after<\/a>\u00a0the chancellery announced it would send one company of Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv as part of a European coalition.<\/p>\n

Yet, this risks creating supply bottlenecks, because Leopard 1s are no longer produced, and their shells have a different caliber than the newer Leopard 2s, the newspaper explained.<\/p>\n

The German government is also considering buying back 15 Gepard tanks it had sold to Qatar \u2014 but might also face some issues there, since ammunition for these is made in Switzerland, which has so far\u00a0refused to approve re-exports<\/a> to Ukraine on the grounds that it would breach its neutrality. However, some Swiss lawmakers are pushing for the country to reconsider its position.<\/p>\n

After weeks of intense pressure from its partners, Germany announced\u00a0last week<\/a>\u00a0it would approve the delivery of about 80 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, including about 14 of its own tanks, as part of a coalition of European countries. Since the tanks are German-made, other countries\u00a0or private companies willing to send them to Ukraine needed the German government\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

Kyiv has been pressing its allies to send tanks for months, saying it needs\u00a0hundreds<\/a>\u00a0to face a potential Russian counteroffensive in the spring.<\/p>\n

The U.K. has also pledged to send Kyiv some of its own\u00a0Challenger 2 tanks,<\/a>while the U.S. has said it will send\u00a031 M1 Abrams tanks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 88 Leopards are in ADDITION to Leopards Germany had already pledged. However, it will be months before Ukraine takes delivery because they still have to be reconditioned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264669"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264672,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264669\/revisions\/264672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}