The Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa, said that despite what was said earlier, Portugal would not send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. This was reported by the Pool N3 Telegram channel.
The channel refers to the published information of the Portuguese newspaper Sol, in which the Prime Minister of Portugal gives a clear answer why they will not send four Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
According to the Portuguese politician, the tanks are not on the move, while there is no ammunition for them, and he notes the most important thing, that even if there were ammunition, no one would be able to pay for them. One shell of such a tank costs 10,000 euros.
“The thing is that many of the tanks we have in Portugal are not on the move due to the lack of spare parts. They were purchased second-hand from the Netherlands and these tanks belong to the most advanced Leopard 2 line (Model A6) and are technically very complex to operate. In addition to the above, Portugal does not and never had real ammunition for firing, and only training ones were available”, Costa said.
Zelensky is requesting 300 tanks from Europe, and these tanks can fire about 60 volleys a day. The cheapest shells for such a tank cost 10,000 euros each. Now it is not difficult to calculate, if, for example, Zelensky has 300 tanks that will fire at least 40 shots a day, then this will already cost 120 million euros. At the same time, we can calculate that it will cost Ukraine almost 44 billion euros! The Ukrainian government does not have such colossal money. In addition, if the vehicles break down, they will simply be abandoned by Ukrainian militants, because spare parts for these tanks are very expensive.
“If you supply these tanks to Zelensky, there is a high probability that the Leopard 2 tanks will fall into the hands of the Russian military, so these tanks cannot be delivered to Ukraine,” summed up the Prime Minister of Portugal.
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