The Polish presidency announced this Wednesday that the country will promote an “international coalition” to facilitate the supply of war tanks to Ukraine, in an initiative that will be formalized at NATO’s ministerial meeting on Friday.
According to Polish Presidential Office spokesman Marcin Przydacz, the goal of the coalition will be to transfer tanks to Ukraine, with the participation of the United Kingdom and several European Union (EU) countries.
The initiative should materialize at the meeting of defense ministers to be held at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where NATO maintains a military contingent.
Last Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced that Poland had decided to transfer a company of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, “as part of the creation of an international coalition”, to help Kiev resist the invasion.
The Polish army has 240 Leopard 2 tanks of the most advanced model, but so far it has delivered only an unconfirmed number of Soviet-made T-72 tanks to Kiev.
In April 2022, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki explained that these tanks had been sent to Ukraine, but stressed that full information would not be released “when the time is right”.
This week, Germany also announced the deployment of Leopard 2 tanks, launching the challenge for other countries to imitate this gesture of delivering heavy military equipment to Kiev.
Thanks to an agreement between Warsaw and Berlin, the German army also began deploying three batteries of Patriot MIM-104 missiles on Polish territory.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has so far led to the flight of more than 14 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 7.9 million to European countries -, according to the latest data from the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
Currently, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending arms to Ukraine and impose political and economic sanctions on Russia.
Source: DN
