The Diplomat
The Ministry of Defence has ruled out the possibility of ceding the ‘Leopard’ battle tanks to Ukraine due to their poor state of preservation, although it does maintain the idea of sending Volodymir Zelensky’s government some twenty TOA M-113 armoured transport vehicles from the Spanish Army.
Initially, Spain considered the option of donating to Ukraine ten ‘Leopard’ tanks owned by the Spanish Army that had been stored for years in facilities in Zaragoza. However,
The cost of this work would have fallen on the Ukraine, but the Army has aborted the possibility of putting them into service because any repair would be too expensive and would also pose a risk to the end users, government sources explained to Europa Press.
The Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, confirmed yesterday, during a visit to the Torrejón de Ardoz air base, that the vehicles are in a “lamentable” condition and the tests carried out confirm that it is not possible to bring them up to standard.
What the Ministry of Defence does maintain is the possibility of donating some twenty M113 armoured transport vehicles to Ukraine, which military sources claim are in better condition and could be put into service.
In any case, Defence stresses that any shipment of this type will always be carried out with the greatest possible discretion in order to avoid risks for both the personnel in charge of transport and the recipient countries, mainly Poland.
In addition, Robles’ Ministry has already prepared a shipment of warm clothing material to help the Ukrainian military cope with the low winter temperatures in Eastern Europe. These are army clothing and footwear that still need to be checked before being sent.
Today the minister will visit the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid to meet with its ambassador, Serhii Pohoreltsev, with whom she plans to discuss these future shipments, as well as the situation of the Ukrainian refugees in Spain and the wounded soldiers being treated at the Military Hospital in Zaragoza.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the Armed Forces have carried out a total of 19 flights to transport offensive and defensive material, in addition to the ship ‘Ysabel’, which transported 200 tonnes of military material to Poland for Ukraine, according to data from the Ministry of Defence.
This shipment of arms and ammunition was the largest ever made by Spain and was announced by the Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, during his visit to Kiev to meet with Zelensky.
The Air Force has also carried out other flights of a humanitarian nature. Specifically, ten flights have taken place in which more than 600 vulnerable people have been transferred to Spain, including children, people with disabilities and the wounded who are being treated in Zaragoza.
These wounded Ukrainian fighters, many of them with serious injuries such as amputations, are also receiving psychiatric and psychological care, rehabilitation and physiotherapy in Spain, as well as support for their inclusion in the temporary protection system and the Spanish health system.
