Thread by @minna_alander

Reports are mounting esp in 🇩🇪 press that after having finally decided to supply leopard tanks to Ukraine, Germany has now been abandoned by countries that had signalled willingness to contribute their part.

I did some research to find out what’s up with 🇳🇱🇩🇰🇸🇪🇫🇮

The Netherlands doesn’t have any own leopards but leases 18 from Germany.

PM Mark Rutte had suggested that 🇳🇱 could buy the 18 tanks from 🇩🇪 & deliver to 🇺🇦. However, after consultations with 🇩🇪, it was decided that the leopards for 🇺🇦 should not come from the 🇩🇪🇳🇱 battalion

Part of the perception that the Netherlands is one of the drivers of the leopard initiative is that the Dutch (both citizens & politicians) are very supportive what comes to military aid to 🇺🇦 and it’s politically pretty much a non-issue.

However, 🇳🇱 doesn’t have much to give.

So instead of the leopard 2s, the Netherlands is financially contributing to the refurbishment of 178 leopard 1s, together with Denmark and Germany.

🇳🇱 supportive stance on delivering fighter jets to Ukraine may have also been muddled into the discussion.

Denmark has 44 leopard 2s, which are among the most modern. However, 14 of those are currently in Estonia on NATO eFP duty, some in maintenance/ getting an upgrade in Germany, and the rest is needed for exercise purposes.

Hence, 🇩🇰 minister of defence Jakob Ellemann-Jensen has repeatedly stated that Denmark can’t spare any of the leopard 2s.

Of the 178 leopard 1s destined to Ukraine, ~100 were sold from Denmark to the German company in 2010. So Denmark is now contributing to fixing them for 🇺🇦.

Norway only has 36 leopard tanks but will donate 8 of them to Ukraine. However, they’re an older model and to be replaced by 54 new ones from 2026 onwards.

Sweden has not announced intention to donate their leopard tanks yet but foreign minister Tobias Billström said last week that 🇸🇪 is exploring ways to contribute to the initiative and 🇸🇪 leadership has emphasised that no future weapons deliveries are excluded

Sweden will also likely be involved in the Finnish contribution via the bilateral letter of intent signed by 🇫🇮&🇸🇪 in Ramstein, in which the countries agreed to use their joint operational planning to enable continued Finnish deliveries to Ukraine

There have been reports about an anonymous NATO source saying that Finland would not contribute tanks until the NATO accession is finalised. I doubt that this is the case since everyone in Finland knows that Ukraine can’t wait for that

🇫🇮 defence minister, foreign minister, president & PM have all said that Finland will be part of the initiative but no details will be given about exact nature (& numbers) of 🇫🇮 contribution until after the leopards have arrived in 🇺🇦. This is the 🇫🇮 line on military aid to 🇺🇦

So to conclude: as far as I’ve understood, the Polish-led battalion of older leo 2s is complete but the German-led still missing about half. Finland has both 2A4 & 2A6 but will hardly to be able to supply half a battalion, since 200 tanks are not a lot for a 1340km border

I’m not sure what’s up with Spanish leos - but Spain hasn’t, for some reason, been in the focus of the 🇩🇪 criticism.

Spain was the first to announce willingness to deliver leopards to Ukraine back in the summer. Subsequently it turned out all of them were in too bad a condition

Now, however, Spain is back on the list of countries contributing and apparently has some (but less than 10?) to donate. 🇪🇸 is supposed to have more than 300 leopards, couldn’t some of them be fixed for Ukraine if they’re currently not in a combat condition…?

Time is running as the Russian offensive is already in full swing and Europe lost lots of precious time, waiting for 🇩🇪 to make up its mind. So other leopard countries better figure out their contributions quickly so that the tanks will arrive in 🇺🇦 in March as planned

(End)