Germany Okays A Dozen Polish Tanks For Ukraine. Hundreds More Could Follow.

In an important reversal, the German government this weekend signaled it wouldn’t try to stop the government of Poland from supplying German-built Leopard 2 tanks to the Ukrainian army.

But Poland could go it alone and still satisfy Ukraine’s request for a whole brigade with at least 100 Leopard 2 tanks.

With more than a thousand of the latest American and South Korean tanks scheduled to arrive in Poland over the next decade, the roughly 250 Leopard 2s in the Polish army’s inventory soon should be excess to need.

The Ukrainian army has wanted Leopard 2s for the better part of a year, but Ukraine’s foreign allies prioritized providing the Ukrainians first with artillery and air-defenses, then with armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles.

The United Kingdom and Poland challenged Germany’s recalcitrance earlier this month, when the two countries respectively offered Ukraine around a dozen each of their Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 tanks.

Two years ago the Polish armor corps, which provides tanks and crews to four tank brigades and six mechanized brigades, possessed around 250 Leopard 2s in several variants as well as 230 or so locally-made PT-91 tanks and some 320 ex-Soviet T-72s.

The Leopard 2 pledge boosted to around 275 the number of Polish tanks destined for Ukrainian service.

But with 1,250 of the world’s newest tanks on their way to Poland from the United States and South Korea—that’s 450 more tanks than Poland had just two years ago—all of Poland’s remaining older tanks arguably are on the verge of being redundant.

Even without its older Leopard 2s and Soviet-style tanks, by the end of the decade the Polish army will have one of the biggest and best tank forces in Europe.

All that is to say, Germany hasn’t just given Poland permission to send a dozen Leopard 2s to Ukraine.