Germany to announce decision on transferring tanks to Ukraine next week
The German federal government may announce a decision regarding the supply of western tanks to Ukraine next week.
Source: European Pravda; Bloomberg, citing two sources
Details: The sources state that Germany is presumably to decide to provide heavy tanks to Ukraine, seeing as calls for Berlin to provide heavy tanks are becoming more and more frequent.
Berlin is expected to make a decision before the meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group at the US Ramstein Air Base on 20 January. Christine Lambrecht, German Defence Minister, will "send a clear signal" about the delivery of the Leopard 2 tank at the meeting, one of Bloomberg's sources said.
According to another source of the agency, as of Thursday, 12 January, Berlin has not yet made a concrete decision, but the pressure on Germany to send heavy tanks is growing.
As Bloomberg notes, there are now appearing signs that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is willing to back down from his initial reluctance to send Leopard 2 tanks, or that he may allow countries like Poland and Finland to re-export their own Leopards to Ukraine.
It is not yet clear whether Germany's decision will only apply to allowing other countries to transfer Leopards to Ukraine, or whether Germany itself will also send them.
Background:
The German government stated that they have not yet received an official request from Poland to transfer their Leopards to Ukraine.
Poland has announced that they are ready to transfer a company of Leopard main battle tanks to Ukraine as part of a coalition with their partner countries.
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