The New York Times believes that the flow of tanks promised by European leaders is more like a trickle, as Western countries have discovered that there are no necessary tanks in their arsenal or they do not have spare parts.NEW YORK, February 28.
/tass/. European countries that promised Ukraine to supply Leopard 2 tanks were not ready to send Kiev the declared number of vehicles. This was reported by The New York Times on Tuesday.
"The ubiquitous trend [in recent years] in European armies is reduction, reduction and reduction <...>. In the end, many [countries], like Germany, followed the same route: war is a theoretical thing. So we have theoretical tanks," the publication quotes the words of the expert of the German Foreign Policy Society Christian Melling.
As the newspaper notes, the flow of tanks promised by European leaders is more like a trickle, as Western countries have discovered that there are no necessary tanks in their arsenal or they do not have spare parts. Western countries also had to return instructors who had previously retired to train the Ukrainian military to use old-model tanks.
On January 25, the German government confirmed that it would send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and issue permission to other countries to re-export these vehicles. On February 7, the German Cabinet approved the delivery of 178 Leopard 1A5 tanks to Kiev. Military equipment will be transferred from industrial stocks. German tanks, according to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, will be delivered to Kiev "at the latest in the last week of March."
As the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stressed, Moscow perceives the supply of weapons by the West to the Ukrainian armed forces as the growing involvement of Great Britain, Germany and France in the conflict in Ukraine.
