Germany gives green signal to send leopard tanks to Ukraine
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Berlin: Germany has pledged to provide Ukraine with leopard tanks and they will arrive by "late March, early April".
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that training Ukrainian troops on German Marder infantry fighting vehicles will be starting in a few days. "For the Ukrainian soldiers who will be trained on the Leopard, it will be a little later." The Leopard 2 is considered to be one of the best-performing tank models worldwide. It is widely used in Europe which makes getting spare parts and ammunition easy.
Germany has been contemplating delivering the heavy tanks for a while despite pressure from Kyiv and its European allies. Now, Berlin has agreed to provide 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from its Bundeswehr supplies, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He told the Parliament that it is also granting approval for other European countries to send the German-made tanks from their own stocks to Ukraine, with the aim of quickly assembling "two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine"
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is seeing the tank deliveries as a "direct involvement in the conflict."
The US has also pledged to send 31 Abrams tanks, one of the most powerful and sophisticated weapons in the US army.