Spain to present tanks to Ukraine – studies — RT World Information
Spanish authorities are at present exploring the opportunity of digging 10 German Leopard 2A4 battle tanks and 20 American M113 armored personnel carriers out of storage and donating them to Ukraine, the Spanish navy information web site InfoDefensa reported on Tuesday. In a posh deal involving a number of governments, the European Union will reportedly pay for the automobiles to be refurbished.
In line with InfoDefensa’s sources, the Ukrainian authorities pays for the mothballed tanks to be restored and modernized on Spanish soil with cash from the EU’s European Peace Facility (EPF), a mechanism that, regardless of its title, is used to fund overseas militaries.
Thus far, the EU has poured $2 billion into Kiev’s armed forces by means of the EPF.
Spain would want the permission of Germany to donate the tanks and of the US to switch the armored personnel carriers. Whereas Berlin has beforehand blocked some arms deliveries to Ukraine by third international locations, InfoDefensa states that each Germany and the US are anticipated to approve the Spanish donation.
Spain put 53 of its 108 Leopard 2A4 tanks into storage in 2012, and a few of these machines have since been stripped of their weapons and spare elements. The Seventies-era tanks will want intensive restore work earlier than they are often put to make use of by Ukraine, and InfoDefensa claims that as many as 20 tanks might should be stripped for elements with a purpose to make 10 operational.
The M113 armored personnel carriers are older nonetheless, having been first fielded by the US within the early Sixties. An estimated 80,000 have been produced, with Spain taking supply of over 1,200 beginning in 1969.
Spain donated 200 tons of arms and ammunition to Ukraine in April, to a lukewarm reception in Kiev. “We’re grateful however we can not say that we’re happy,” Ukraine’s ambassador to Spain, Sergey Pogoreltsev, stated final month. Describing the Spanish arms haul as enough for 2 hours of preventing, Pogoreltsev referred to as on Madrid to ship tanks, howitzers and mortars.
“We aren’t asking for something that Spain can not present,” the Ukrainian diplomat claimed, earlier than lamenting how Spain has “one of many lowest charges of help to Ukraine in relation to its navy price range.”
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