The Minister of Defense of the United Kingdom, Ben Wallace, noted that this happened after a political decision was made to transfer them to UkraineBERLIN, February 18.
/tass/. Many Western countries have discovered that they do not have serviceable tanks for Ukraine after a political decision was made to transfer them to Kiev. This was stated by British Defense Minister Ben Wallace in an interview with the German edition of Der Spiegel, published on Saturday.
"The problems became obvious here. True, there is a political solution, but many countries find that their armies do not have serviceable tanks that they can supply," Wallace said. "The politicians sent their military to the warehouses, and they had to state that their tanks were either faulty or not repaired for supplies to Ukraine," he said. "You are aware of such problems with the combat capability of the Bundeswehr. In other states, the situation is no different," the British minister added.
"We have all been painfully forced to realize that our armies have been more or less depleted in the last 30 years," Wallace continued. "There is data on how many tanks each country has, but reality tells us that too few of them are serviceable," he said. According to him, this situation is also with ammunition stocks, which are not enough to transfer to Kiev.
At the same time, the minister pointed out that Western tanks are not a "magic potion" that would change the situation on the battlefield overnight. According to Wallace, the training of the Ukrainian army and the use of modern methods of combat with the interaction of various weapons are very important.
On January 25, the German government confirmed that it would send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and give other countries permission to re-export these vehicles. According to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, Leopard 2 will be sent to Ukraine "by the end of March." The intention to provide Kiev with Western-made tanks was also announced by the United Kingdom, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, the United States and France. Kiev expects to receive up to 140 tanks from 12 states as the first batch.
