Poland Can Transfer Leopard Tanks To Ukraine Without Germany's Consent - Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

Poland can transfer its Leopard tanks to Ukraine without Germany's consent, but it is important that Berlin also transfers its Leopards to Kiev as soon as possible, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday

WARSAW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th January, 2023) Poland can transfer its Leopard tanks to Ukraine without Germany's consent, but it is important that Berlin also transfers its Leopards to Kiev as soon as possible, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday.

Last week, Polish President Andrzej Duda said his country would hand over a batch of Leopard tanks to Ukraine as part of an international coalition which the country seeks to build to organize joint hardware deliveries to Kiev. German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said that Berlin so far did not intend to supply Ukraine with Leopards. On Wednesday, Morawiecki said that Poland would hand over its Leopard tanks to Ukraine only on the condition that other countries did so.

"We have agreed with our Ukrainian friends, as well as with partners from Western Europe, that we will transfer these tanks together.

Consent is secondary here. We will either get this consent quickly, or we will do it as we should," Morawiecki said in an interview with Polish broadcaster Polsat.

He added that it is important that other countries, and most importantly Germany, offer their modern tanks as soon as possible, because the ability to "protect freedom in Ukraine" and the security of the whole of Europe may depend on this.

In April 2022, Moscow sent a note to NATO member states condemning their military assistance to Kiev after Russia started its military operation in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that pumping Ukraine with weapons contributed nothing to the success of peace negotiations and would have a detrimental effect on the conflict.