As of: March 26, 2024, 11:36 a.m
By: Florian Naumann
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Neverending story instead of “as soon as possible” delivery?
At the beginning of 2023, Denmark promised Ukraine 100 Leopards - the delivery is continuing.
Copenhagen - It wasn't that long ago that battle tanks were the big issue in the West's arms support for the Ukrainian defensive war.
In the spring of 2023, an announcement from Denmark certainly made people sit up and take notice: a whopping 100 Leopard-1 tanks were to go to Kiev in cooperation with the Netherlands and Germany - if possible before the turn of the year.
A good year later, it can be said that the plan hasn't quite worked out yet.
According to information from the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten,
only 30 tanks actually arrived in Ukraine.
The government in Copenhagen is quite uncomfortable with this.
However, she sees the progress “not in Denmark’s hands” – and largely assigns responsibility for the tank “delay” to Germany.
Denmark's Leopard donation in the Ukraine war is lame: "Germany was late"
Denmark's Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen explained the situation to broadcaster
DR
on Monday (March 25th) with reference to problems in the Federal Republic.
“The reason is that we had problems repairing the tanks, the Germans were late in repairing them,” he explained.
The politician from the center-right Venstre party did not want to confirm the number of 30 Danish Leopard-1s in Ukraine - for “operational reasons”.
In other words: You don't want to give Russia information on equipment in the Ukraine war without necessity.
However, it was “no secret that we had a delay in the delivery of the Leopard 1 tanks.”
It was only in September 2023 that the
dpa
reported the delivery of the first “Danish” Leopard.
Leopard 1 main battle tank in spring 2023 on the premises of the Flensburg company FFG.
© Axel Heimken/picture-alliance/dpa
Lund Poulsen said in February 2023 that the tanks should go to Ukraine “as quickly as possible”.
“We said that we want to reach our goal with the donation by the end of 2023.
Now we are at the beginning of 2024, and in this respect it is annoying that we are late,” the Defense Minister now admitted.
The suspected background to the problems: Some of the Danish “Leopards” had not been in use for a long time - they were waiting for further use in Germany.
Denmark's Leopard for Ukraine: Expensive buyback from storage
The tanks were stored, among other places, in Flensburg, not far from the Danish border, the newspaper
Der Nordschleswiger
wrote on Monday.
The Leopard-1s had “not been in use for many years” and needed repairs and inspection.
DR
wrote about “technical problems”.
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According to a report by
NDR
, the Flensburg tanks had already been sold to the FFG company in 2010 for an approximate “scrap value” of 13,000 euros each.
In view of the war in Ukraine, the buyback price rose massively: the – unconfirmed – talk was of one million euros per tank.
There was also a similar price explosion in connection with a Belgian tank deal.
Together with costs for transport, spare parts, ammunition and training for Ukrainian soldiers, Denmark had budgeted 130 million euros for the delivery, Danish journalist Peter Rasmussen told the broadcaster at the time.
Boris Pistorius' (SPD) Defense Ministry wrote of a “delivery from industrial stocks” – “after overhaul”.
“If you have Leopard tanks, then give them to us,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj demanded before a donor conference in Ramstein in January 2023.
Even if back then the focus was more towards the more modern Leopard-2, there were great hopes for the tanks - especially with a view to Ukraine's counter-offensive planned for the summer of 2023.
Western tanks in Ukraine: Too little, too late – and not all that helpful?
The counteroffensive has now largely fizzled out; Ukraine is instead working on resilient defense lines.
Maybe also because of a lack of military material.
“The problem is that Ukraine needs at least 100 of these tanks to make a significant difference,” said military expert Andy Milburn in January 2023
FR.de
of
IPPEN.MEDIA
, referring to the Leopard-2.
But expectations regarding Western tanks have also cooled.
There are also problems with British Challengers and US Abrams - because of their high weight and the unusual drone war in Ukraine.
“Ammunition, more drones, more Bradleys or CV-90s, more artillery and pretty much everything else would have been money better spent,” US expert Mike Riedmüller recently told the
Kyiv Post
.
After all: The Leopard-1 is a lot lighter than the Leopard-2.
There were also problems with spare parts with the newer variant.
However, there could still be hurdles even after deployment.
A possible front-line deployment also depends on Ukraine, said Lund Poulsen: on whether “their teams are trained and when they are ready to put the tanks into use.” (
fn
)