In November 2022, some officials in Germany talked about an agreement to supply Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

Alyona Hetmanchuk, director of the "New Europe" Center, said this in an interview with TSN.ua.

"In November, I started receiving messages from German officials that they had made a decision internally: "Leopards" will be for Ukraine. The only question is when and how much? It's a waste of time. After all, if this decision was already made then, we lost several additional months." , - she noted.

According to Hetmanchuk, one of the arguments of the Germans regarding the impossibility of transferring equipment to Ukraine concerned the training of the military.

"There was an argument that it is very difficult and very long to train on them. I even heard such an argument, they say, "we don't want to take Ukrainian soldiers to train on Leopard 2 tanks, because those people are very needed at the front today." - added the expert.

According to her, the main fear in Germany is the fear of an even greater escalation on the part of the head of the Kremlin, Putin, because since the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine, for the first time we are talking about weapons that are offensive and aimed at attacking.

"There was an argument, they said, 'for the Germans, the issue of tanks is very painful, because some memories of the Second World War come up, where the fiercest battles were precisely tank battles and, first of all, on the territory of Ukraine,'" added Alyona Hetmanchuk, director of the "New Europe" Center.

We will remind you that earlier the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine needed 300-500 tanks for a counteroffensive.

And the West has already promised Ukraine hundreds of tanks.

This was reported by the ambassador in France.

He also named the number of combat vehicles for Ukraine.

Earlier, Germany promised Ukraine 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks, and Spain can provide more than 50 such tanks, Poland - more than 70, Canada - 4.

Moreover, the Armed Forces will receive 31 Abrams tanks from the United States, 14 Challenger 2 tanks from Britain, and AMX-10 RC tanks from France.

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• In Scholz's party, the liberation of Crimea and other territories by German tanks was called "legitimate".