'Free the Leopards!' Campaign aims to 'embarrass' Germany into sending tanks to Ukraine
A campaign launched by two Finnish politicians aims to 'embarrass' Germany into providing Leopard tanks for Ukraine.
Until now, no Western country has given main battle tanks to help the Ukrainian military -- although France announced this week that so-called light tanks, the AMX-10 RC armoured fighting vehicles, will be supplied for the first time.
The US said it would consider sending similar Bradley Fighting Vehicles as well.
But Anders Adlercreutz from the Swedish Peoples' Party and Atte Harjanne from the Greens argue that if smaller countries with Leopard tanks give a few each, then Europe's biggest user of the Leopards, Germany, will have no excuses left not to provide the tanks -- which the Ukrainians themselves have asked for.
"If we can give a political signal of the larger readiness to pool resource that would negate the argument against providing tanks to Ukraine, and instead be sure it would make a significant difference," said Harjanne, who sits on the Finnish parliament's defence committee and is his party's parliamentary group chairperson.
So are the duo trying to embarrass Germany with this initiative? Harjanne chuckles. "Well, it more like constructive pressure," he tells Euronews, diplomatically.
"The threshold for sending main battle tanks is getting lower and lower all the time, and when you have the political will to do it next you need to take pragmatic steps to put together the training and maintenance capacity with a project like this."
And the nascent campaign is having some success so far.
It's prompted positive reactions from fellow lawmakers in Sweden, Slovakia and Denmark, and is likely to be discussed when Finland's own parliament gets back to work next week: although no country has committed
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