Image source: topwar.ru
Spain cannot transfer German tanks to Ukraine in the near future, but will transfer American M113 armored personnel carriers to the Ukrainian army as compensation. Europa Press writes about this.
Spain turns on the rear, announcing that it is impossible to deliver even the promised number of tanks to Kiev due to their technical condition. So those four or six Leopard 2A4, which were discussed in the Spanish Defense Ministry, will not go to Ukraine in the near future, they will have a long repair, complicated by the lack of necessary spare parts and components. In the future, the APU, of course, will receive them for service, but when it will be, there are no forecasts yet.
To somehow compensate for this news, Spain will replace tanks with American M113 armored personnel carriers. The armored vehicles will leave for Ukraine at the beginning of next week. In total, Kiev will receive 20 armored personnel carriers, some of them will be in the version of a self-propelled mortar. This information was confirmed by the Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles.
In general, the Spaniards have quite big plans for the supply of tanks to the Kiev regime, we are talking about 53 Leopard 2A4, but this is in the best case. It is this amount of German heavy armored vehicles that has been in the custody of the Spanish army for 10 years. It is not yet known what technical condition they are in, but Madrid plans to gradually remove the equipment from storage and carry out repairs. The process is not fast and quite expensive.
In August last year, Spain already announced the start of sending 20 (twenty) tracked M113 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine, removed from conservation. There is no information about whether the equipment was delivered to the Ukrainian territory, but preparatory work for shipment was reported.
