The latest Leopard 1 tanks delivered to Ukraine by Denmark are not holding up, according to Danish channel TV 2. Of the 20 armored vehicles , at least 12 are defective, according to a note of the Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen.
Ten of these tanks have already arrived in Ukraine and now need to be repaired by engineers on site, the minister said. Two others with serious defects are still stored in Poland.
In addition, the Ukrainian Army has not trained mechanics capable of fixing major breakdowns, the minister emphasized. The German defense firm Flensburger Fahrzeugbau (FFG) is providing military equipment maintenance and temporarily refurbishing the most affected tanks.
The tanks delivered by Copenhagen are Leopard 1A5s. Denmark decommissioned this model in 2005.
Kiev Snubs Berlin
Recently, Kiev refused a dozen Leopard tanks offered by Berlin. Ukraine judged that the equipment was of too poor quality to be used on the frontline, the German media Der Spiegel has reported. The tanks had already been used for training Ukrainian soldiers in Germany and needed repairs, but the lack of spare parts and technical personnel in Ukraine made their transfer unnecessary.
In early September, several Danish museums had already been put to work in order to provide Leopard 1s necessary for the training of Ukrainian tankmen. Six working tanks had come out of various establishments, Forbes magazine reported.
Likewise, other observers are now questioning the usefulness of the delivery of US Abrams tanks to Kiev. The latter must be "used in a very adapted way, for specific operations," Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian military intelligence service, had recently noted.