Thread by @GresselGustav

So, there finally is some movement in the 🇩🇪 arms delivery debate. A "swap deal" seems to be on the way with 🇸🇮: Germany will give #Marder IFV and #Fuchs APC to Slovenia, in turn Slovenia will give M-84 MBT to 🇺🇦.
faz.net/aktuell/politi…

The M-84 is a Yugoslav copy of the T-72, with inferior armour compared to the T-72B and T-64 UA is using right now. 🇸🇮 uses 14 for training and has further 32 in store.
While of course one may wonder why 🇸🇮 wants to trade an MBT with an IFV, the low numbers indicate that these...

... Marder are from the 100 Marder that wetre phased out and do not belong to the Bundeswehr anymore. Most of them are in a bad shape and need extensive overhaul, but the roughly 40 in question could be delivered rather sooner.

Notewothy however, up until yesterday, the government, particularly @Bundeskanzler and @BMVg_Bundeswehr maintained that no Marder were available, and any delivery of them would weaken the Bundeswehr as it would have to come from their stock.

In practice of course everyone knew that that was not true, and the discrepancy between reality and political statement created considerable distrust abroad as well as infighting in Berlin.
The communication desaster was made worse by SPD pundits discrediting/attacking critics.

Generally, such a "swap" deal is the best way to make use of the Marder IFVs in the first place, and it would have been smart if the government would have stated from the beginning that it would seek such a sollution instead of now falsifying their own arguments from 2 days ago.

There were several other #EU/#NATO allies who from March onwards proposed similar swaps for the BMP-2 in their inventory.
The government would have done itself a favour if it would have stated it would consider such options, instead of leaving them in the dark.