Denmark and Germany will jointly provide 80 Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine, which will be ready for use in June 2023.
This was stated by Danish minister of economy and acting minister of defense Troels Lund Poulsen in a commentary to the state-run TV2 Nyheder.
On May 5, he made a working visit to Germany where he and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius inspected the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ tank oerating skills training.
Troels Lund Poulsen (photo: Getty Images)
“We are supplying 80 Leopard 1 tanks, and it is a significant amount,” the minister said.
According to him, the Leopard 1 tanks will be ready for transfer to Ukraine on June 1. Training for Ukrainian tankers will take about a month. He added that these Leopard 1 tanks have been in storage since being decommissioned in 2005.
The German government has given a green light to export 187 Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine. 99 of them belong to tank maker FFG in Flensburg that had bought a Danish stock of decommissioned Leopard 1s.
Earlier, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported, citing sources, that Ukraine could receive up to 160 Leopard 1 main battle tanks from Germany’s industrial stocks.
In early February 2023, it became known that Denmark plans to transfer Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine, which are no longer part of the country’s armed forces.
