Germany denied Friday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had imposed conditions on the United States to authorize the delivery of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, amid pressure from its European partners to take the step.
Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit assured that «at no time» was the delivery of the German-made Leopards, whose transfer cannot be carried out without German authorization, conditioned on the delivery of the U.S. M1 Abrams tanks.
«There is no connection or demand that the one has to happen for the other to happen,» Hebestreit said, thus coming out against what many German media had been speculating in recent days, as other countries such as Poland and Finland push for this to happen.
«I find it hard to imagine a German chancellor dictating conditions or making demands on a U.S. president,» a country, the spokesman said, with which it has to work in a coordinated manner as it has been doing since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly a year ago.
Asked about warnings from Poland and Finland that they were even prepared to bypass the clauses preventing the delivery of such tanks without prior authorization from Germany, Hebestreit said that all of Berlin’s partners «certainly want to comply with the law».
In this sense, he recalled that from the Polish side, and in spite of the continuous declarations appearing in the media, no formal request for the delivery of these tanks has been presented.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
