The Danish Ministry of Defense announced the delivery of the first Leopard tanks to Kyiv in the spring

Denmark will hand over the first promised Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine in the spring, Acting Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said. On March 10, the head of the department visited the Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG) enterprise, where tanks are being prepared for shipment, according to site Kingdom Ministry of Defense.

The Danish government is cooperating on the issue of arms supplies with Germany and the Netherlands. As specified in the Ministry of Defense, we are talking about sending Kyiv at least 100 Leopard 1 tanks.

“I am very glad that I visited FFG. I was there to make sure that the work on preparing the Leopard 1 tanks for Ukraine is progressing so that we can send them as soon as possible,” Poulsen said. He expressed hope that the first tanks would arrive in Ukraine in the spring.

According to the ministry, Denmark, together with the Netherlands and Germany, launched a project in early February to repair a large number of Leopard 1A5 tanks. Initially, it is planned to supply two battalions with about 80 tanks free of charge, the Ukrainian military will also be able to receive training in their operation and receive spare parts and ammunition, the press release says.

In February, the Ministry of Defense of the Netherlands reportedthat the country, together with Denmark, plans to purchase from Germany about 100 Leopard 1 tanks for their further delivery to Ukraine. As Minister of Defense Kaisa Ollongren reported, we are talking about modernized tanks that are in the stocks of the German defense industry. The tanks were decommissioned in Germany in 2003. It is specified that the delivery of the Leopard 1 is carried out independently of the more modern Leopard 2 tanks, the shipment of which Berlin allowed on January 24th.

Earlier, the newspaper Der Spiegel reported that Berlin had approved the delivery of 178 Leopard 1 main battle tanks to Kyiv. They will be delivered to Ukraine this summer. On January 25, Germany and the United States announced the delivery of 14 Leopard 2 tanks and 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Kyiv. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius specified that the first German military equipment would arrive in Ukraine in late March or early April. Poland, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands also announced plans to transfer tanks to Kyiv.

In January, the Kremlin said that the supply of tanks to Kyiv would not change the situation, but would “add problems” for Ukraine. Later, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stressed that the Leopard and Abrams tanks, which the West is going to transfer to Ukraine, will burn down in the same way as the rest of Western military equipment.