KIEV, January 22. /TASS/. Ukraine’s armed forces are creating new units for potential supplies of NATO tanks, Ukrainian Joint Force Commander Lieutenant-General Sergey Nayev said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
"Of course, we need a large number of Western tanks. They are much better than the Soviet models and can help us advance. We are creating new military units. And our next actions will depend on their combat readiness. Therefore, Western assistance is extremely important," Nayev told CNN.
Ukrainian commanders expect newly created units to be equipped with the same Western weapons, Nayev added. "The whole unit should be equipped with the same vehicle, so a whole battalion is equipped with Bradley, if we get it, or with Leopards (German tanks - TASS)," he said.
The US has no announcements on sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine and Germany has not decided on handing over Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev either, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said following a meeting between Western defense ministers at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday. Earlier, Germany’s defense chief Boris Pistorius said there was no unified coalition interested in supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine. However, he did not rule out that such a decision could be made in the next few days.
Ukrainian officials have been imploring the West to dispatch tanks. Kiev had expressed hope that such a decision would be made at the Ramstein airbase, but there was no agreement on the topic at that meeting.