CAIRO, January 24. /TASS/. US President Joe Biden is ready to give 10 Abrams tanks to Kiev in a bid to prompt Germany to follow suit with its Leopard tanks, Sky News Arabia said on Tuesday, citing an unidentified person at the Pentagon.
According to the person, President Joe Biden is ready to send about 10 Abrams tanks to break the Leopard impasse. The person talked about the need for Germany to "abandon its intransigence" and transfer some Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Kiev needs 500 tanks to counter an expected Russian military operation, the person said.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on January 20 the decision to supply Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine hadn’t been adopted at the meeting of a contact group for military assistance to the country, which took place at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
Earlier on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a joint news conference with Pistorius that the decision was coming soon. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said supplies of Leopard tanks would bode ill for relations between Russia and Germany.