Zelenskiy Pleads With Germany To Provide Tanks For Its Frontline Troops
Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelenskiy has made a direct appeal to Germany to provide tanks ahead of crunch talks, involving dozens of western allies at Ramstein air base in southern Germany.
Mr Zelenskiy told German public TV the tanks are to be used to defend Ukraine and not to attack Russia, while criticising the German government’s hesitant attitude.
The US and European nations have already promised Kyiv more equipment to fight Russia’s invasion.
Germany is under growing pressure to allow its leopard 2 tanks to be sent.
The UK also offered 14 of its battle tanks recently – but Kyiv wants more.
Defence officials from more than 50 countries are due to meet at Ramstein, a day after the US and several European nations pledged more equipment to help Ukraine fend off any further Russian offensives.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking via video link at the opening of a meeting of Ukraine-supporting defence ministers from 50 countries in Ramstein, Germany, said it was “in your power” to at least make a decision in principle to send tanks.
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Urgent action was necessary, the Ukrainian leader said, because “Russia is concentrating its forces, last forces, trying to convince everyone that hatred can be stronger than the world”
It was necessary to “speed up” weapons supplies, Zelenskiy said, because the war with Russia amounted to a battle between freedom and autocracy. “It is about what kind of world people will live in, people who dream, love and hope.”
Berlin is at the centre of the supply debate because it has yet to allow the re-export of any of the 2,000 plus German-made Leopard 2 tanks owned by Nato countries, holding out for the US to agree to send some of its own Abrams tanks in addition.
The US argues its Abrams tanks, which run on jet engines, are fuel-inefficient and so difficult to supply, but earlier this week the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, asked the US president, Joe Biden, to send US tanks in return for sending its own Leopard tanks.
Prior to the Ramstein gathering, Germany’s newly appointed defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said his country’s willingness to deliver tanks to Ukraine would not depend on whether the US was prepared to do the same. Speaking to German media, Pistorius said “such a deal is not something I’m aware of”.
