Pressure on Berlin from all sides to provide Leopard tanks to Kiev

THE pressure is building fast on Germany to supply battle tanks to Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr

elensky among others taking turns on Thursday to criticize Berlin’s hesitancy in delivering heavy arms.

“There are times when we shouldn’t hesitate and say: ‘I will give tanks if someone else shares their tanks.’ I don’t think this is the right strategy to go with,” elensky told a panel on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

elensky has been pleading for Germany to send Leopard 2 battle tanks. But so far Chancellor Olaf Scholz has resisted, saying he needed to be in lockstep with NATO allies, namely the United States. The German government and freshly installed Defence Minister Boris Pistorius will face a major test on Friday when allies meet at a US Air Force base in Ramstein in western Germany to discuss arms for Ukraine. The pressure is coming at Berlin from nearly all fronts.

In Kiev, the head of the president’s office, Andriy ermak, once again urged the delivery of tanks.

“The issue of tanks for Ukraine should be resolved as soon as possible,” ermak wrote on the Telegram messaging service on Thursday. He added that the same applies to additional air defence systems. “We don’t have time, the world doesn’t have that time either,” he said.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov also weighed in: “We guarantee that we will use these weapons responsibly and exclusively for the purposes of protecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders,” they said in a joint statement.

They mentioned 12 states by name, including Germany, Turkey and Spain. Poland and Finland, also listed, have already announced their intention to supply more than two dozen Leopard tanks as part of an “international tank coalition.” The German-built Leopard tank is widely exported and is used by armed forces of various countries.

In the appeal, the Ukrainian ministers wrote that “Russia retains a substantial quantitative advantage in troops, weapons and military equipment.” There was a “threat of a new full-scale offensive by the Russian forces,” Kuleba and Reznikov warned.

Scholz’s main domestic political opponents, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said on Thursday that “it is now time to effectively support Ukraine.” “It is now time for Germany to finally give the green light for the delivery of battle tanks,” said senior CDU lawmaker Johann Wadephul.