WARSAW (Reuters) – Germany’s approval for the re-export of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine is of secondary importance as Poland could send those tanks as a part of a coalition of nations even without its permission, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday.
America and its allies failed during talks in Germany last week to persuade Berlin to supply its Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine, a key demand from Kyiv because it tries to breathe latest momentum into its fight against Russian forces.
Poland is pushing for countries who’ve German-made Leopards to send them to Ukraine, even when Germany doesn’t want to hitch them.
“We are going to ask for such permission, but that is a problem of secondary importance. Even when we didn’t get this approval … we’d still transfer our tanks along with others to Ukraine”, Morawiecki told reporters.
“The condition for us for the time being is to construct at the very least a small coalition of nations.”
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Germany wouldn’t stand in the way in which if Poland sent its German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Sunday in an interview with French television LCI.
“Pressure is sensible, because this weekend, the foreign minister of Germany sent a rather different message that offers a glimmer of hope that not only Germany is not going to block (sending tanks) but will finally hand over heavy equipment, modern equipment to assist Ukraine,” Morawiecki said.
(Reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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