Posted on 01/22/2023 8:34:07 PM PST by FarCenter
Paris (AFP) – Germany is ready to authorise Poland to send German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine to help Kyiv fight the Russian invasion if Warsaw makes such a request, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Sunday.
"If we are asked the question, then we will not stand in the way," Baerbock told LCI television after a Franco-German summit meeting in Paris.
"We know how important these tanks are and this is why we are discussing this now with our partners. We need to make sure people's lives are saved and Ukraine's territory liberated."
Baerbock, who represents the Greens in Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz's ruling coalition, said that Poland had yet to make a formal request.
Her comments come as Berlin resists pressure from Kyiv to send some of its own stocks of the Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
Poland has announced it is ready to deliver 14 Leopard tanks to Kyiv but Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he was waiting for "a clear statement" from Berlin whether countries that have the Leopards can transfer them to Ukraine.
He also described Germany's refusal to send its own tanks to Ukraine as "unacceptable".
"Innocent people are dying every day," told the PAP agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
14 Leopards vs 500 T90 tanks. That should turn the tide.
Panzers to the Ukraine... again. Germans really have a hangup.
Poland is very much not on its own.
- Something of a Leopard II donation consortium is forming. Sweden and the Netherlands seem a sure thing, Finland is possible. Others are likely to come in when the pipeline becomes active.
- Poland is now receiving shipments of US M1’s to backfill Leopard and T72 donations. Poland was to get @350 of them. 250 M1A2 Sep3 to backfill Leopards, and 100 M1A1 to backfill T72’s. Ultimately all 250 of the Polish Leopards should become available to donate.
Theres more Leopards than that on the way, now that the Germans are “flexible”.
Annalena Baerbock’s grandpa was an Eastern Front nazi soldier in WWII, according to her. Apple don’t fall far from the tree.
Ukraine had 6500 tanks when they started. Why does anyone think they will do better now? LOL
Russia had 270,000 soldiers when they started
why does anyone think they will do better now? LOL
I doubt 6500 means serviceable tanks. That number sounds like the Russian 20,000 tanks.
The vast majority of both numbers were referring to rusting scrapyards. There are pictures of both Ukrainian and Russian ones.
Now, that does mean that both Ukraine and Russia have a base of material with which to put together working tanks, rebuilding and cannibalizing. But that is going to happen at a low rate.
You really need to change your handle, it’s embarrassing.
Andrzej Duda’s grandpa fought in the Polish-Soviet war
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
and in the Polish Home Army.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Army
Duda is way more relevant to all this. A rarely mentioned player in the events of 2022-23, his influence has been profound.
What is unconservative here?
Next you will be calling the Polish government communists.
Even hundreds won’t turn the tide. Ukraine lost thousands already.
In summer Ukraine had a million men army, now they struggle to maintain 600k. The videos of recruiters grabbing grandpas in the streets are all over the place.
And where are the photos-videos of those “thousands”?
I mean, its slam-dunk propaganda if true. It certainly was for the Ukrainians. But the Russians dont show it. They would if they could. But they can’t so they don’t.
I’m not about to try to explain things to simple minds. Its not worth the effort.
…Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki … also described Germany’s refusal to send its own tanks to Ukraine as “unacceptable”….
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Unacceptable? The Germans might consider that terminology strange and maddening coming from a country that was likely complicit (along with the US and UK) with blowing up Germany’s NordStream pipeline network.
Why should they? Ukraine shows a lot of its losses as Russian if you mean oryx.
The Russians aren’t allowed to have cell phones and don’t care about propaganda much.
The fact is that Ukraine had 700+ operational tanks in 2014 and then reactivated 80-120 per year from mothballs. They also received hundreds since the conflict started from foreign countries. And yet they beg for more meaning that not a lot remained.
Simple logic.
Slava Polska!
“”Ukraine had 6500 tanks when they started. Why does anyone think they will do better now? LOL””
Why don’t you tell us? Those were the USSR tanks that were just left there when the recent Russian empire collapsed in 1991.
What were those tanks? Were those tanks real or usable, or just like the many 10s of thousands of other soviet tanks in Russia that were really abandoned hulks on paper?
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