The front is barely moving these weeks in the war between Russia and Ukraine on the latter’s soil, although the fighting continues. The upcoming arrival of spring will foreseeably change the scenario, partly also due to the supply of tanks of western origin that kyiv is about to receive. This is a total of 256 cars, according to the announcements that a dozen countries have made since last January.
At that time, a count began that already includes 171 Leopard tanks of German origin and 31 American M1 Abrams, to which different sources add 40 light tanks, in this case on wheels, AMX-10 RC from France. The total balance, therefore, adds 216 tanks of German, American and British manufacture, plus the aforementioned 40 of smaller French manufacture.
Those of German origin are specifically 21 Leopard 2A6, ten Leopard 2A5, 40 Leopard 2A4 and 100 Leopard 1A5, distributed, according to model and country, as explained below:
The 21 Leopard 2A6 are 18 German units, the result of adding to the 14 initially announced another four that Berlin added a couple of weeks ago, and three Portuguese, according to the commitment that Lisbon revealed last month.
The 10 Leopard 2A5 are officially called Stridsvagn 122, which is how the local version of this German tank is known in Sweden, the country that supplied the ten committed vehicles.
The 40 Leopard 2A4 are being sent by Poland (14), Spain (ten, if the purpose announced by the country’s president, Pedro Sánchez, is fulfilled and four are added to the six already committed), Norway (eight) and Canada ( eight).
The 100 Leopard 2A5s come from an initiative by the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark to finance this operation, known for just over a month.
The 31 North American M1 Abrams, for their part, will be supplied by Washington, as has been pointed out, and which, at first, revealed that it would order them from the industry, although later the possibility of them being supplied directly from stocks was raised. own.
The 14 Challenger 2, as has also been explained, are supplied by the United Kingdom.
light tanks
Different sources add to these 216 Western-made battle tanks the AMX-10 RC armored vehicles on wheels armed with 105 mm cannons that have been compromised by France, and which they call light tanks. Paris announced that it would supply them to Ukraine a couple of weeks before the British put their Challenger 2s on the table, in a gesture that was then interpreted as a significant increase in the level of weapons provided to Kiev. It was a kind of step prior to the shipments of Western tanks to which the aforementioned allies have subsequently committed themselves.
There are 40 AMX-10 RC manufactured by France that, if we add them to the previous ones, give a result of 256 western cars on the way to Ukraine. There, within a few weeks, or a few months depending on the case, they will begin to fight against the Russian forces together with the more than half a thousand tanks of Soviet origin that the country has received since the war began, in February 2022, the more than 500 also that has captured the enemy since then, and the around 1,200 that counted at the beginning of the fighting; and discounting, logically, the almost 500 tanks that Ukraine has lost in the confrontations, according to the graphic evidence compiled by the Dutch intelligence analyst Oryx, from which the bulk of these figures are extracted.
The Ukrainian authorities pointed out a few months ago that they needed 400 Western-made battle tanks to defeat Russia. At the moment it will already have more than half of those requested. As of this spring it will be possible to verify if its role on the ground is as decisive as it has been pointed out.
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