(Ottawa) Canada will donate four of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. This is its contribution to the reinforcement promised by several countries of the Western coalition to counter the Russian offensive.
National Defense Minister Anita Anand made the announcement at a press conference in parliament on Thursday, a day after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signaled that his government was allowing allies with the German-made vehicles to use them. ship to Kyiv.
Canada has a total of 112 Leopard 2 tanks – 82 combat tanks and 30 engineering and recovery tanks.
These heavy tanks are added to those already promised by Germany (14 Leopard 2 type 2A6 from the stocks of its army) and the United States (31 Abrams combat tanks). Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland are also expected to supply such armor to Kyiv.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Wednesday applauded the decision of the West, but he also seemed to want to raise the stakes, this time demanding long-range missiles and fighter jets.
In the Kremlin, spokesman Dmitry Peskov argued that the West “overestimated[ait] the potential” that tanks could give to the Ukrainian army. “These tanks will burn like all the others. […] Except that these are very expensive, and it is the European taxpayers who will pay the price,” he insisted.
With Agence France-Presse