German military equipment manufacturer Rheinmetall will restore 30 Leopard 1 tanks for delivery to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, The Guardian reports Wednesday with reference to a company spokesperson.
The arms giant is reported to have bought a total of 49 main battle tanks from Belgian private defense firm OIP Land Systems, but some of them are in such poor condition that they can only be used for spare parts.
The Rheinmetall representative did not specify when the tanks would be shipped to Ukraine, but OIP chief executive Freddy Versluys said that would not happen before six months.
In this context, The Guardian points out that the Belgian company had previously purchased 50 Leopard 1 tanks that the country’s authorities put out of service in 2014. For each of them the firm paid 37,000 euros, about 40,700 US dollars.
On the eve of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to Berlin last May, the German government announced a new military aid package for Kiev worth $2.9 billion. However, the newspaper Die Welt reported last week that so far only a small fraction of the promised weapons have been delivered.
According to official data analyzed by the German media, since the middle of that month, Berlin has not sent a single Marder infantry fighting vehicle, no IRIS-T anti-aircraft defense system and no tanker truck to Ukraine. Of the promised 110 Leopard tanks, kyiv has received only 10, of the 18 Gepard anti-aircraft armored vehicles only 12, and of the 26,350 rounds of artillery ammunition only 850.
Germany is the second largest arms supplier to Ukraine after the US.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in May that his country’s support for Kiev, including military and financial aid, had so far amounted to 17 billion euros (about $18.7 billion). with RT