Poland will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of the 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has already pledged, the Polish prime minister has said in an interview.
Key points:
- Poland has sent hundreds of tanks to its neighbour Ukraine since Russia invaded in February last year
- The PT-91 is a Polish-made battle tank that came into service in the 1990s
- Russia has blocked the CIA and FBI websites for ‘spreading false information’
Warsaw, which has positioned itself as one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies, had pressed hard for Germany to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and to allow other countries to do so as well, a demand which Berlin agreed to on Wednesday.
“Poland sent 250 tanks as the first country half a year ago or even more than that,” Mateusz Morawiecki told Canada’s CTV News.
“Right now, we are ready to send 60 of our modernised tanks, 30 of them PT-91.
“And on top of those tanks, 14 tanks, Leopard 2 tanks, from in our possession.”
The PT-91 is a Polish-made battle tank that came into service in the 1990s.
It was developed from the Soviet-era T-72 range, of which Ukraine has hundreds.
The remainder of the tanks that will be sent are upgraded T-72s.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Poland on Twitter for the decision to supply the additional tanks.
“Like 160 years ago we are together, but this time the enemy doesn’t stand a chance,” Mr Zelenskyy wrote. “Together we will win!”
On Thursday, Canada announced that it would send four Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine.
Norway has also said it will send Leopards, while Spain says it is open to providing them.
Ukraine has said it needs hundreds of the Leopards to drive Russia from its territory.
On Friday, Poland’s Deputy Defence Minister Marcin Ociepa told private broadcaster RMF FM that it would be around three months before Leopard tanks reached Ukraine.
“It depends what country we are talking about, but I would estimate that we are talking about around a quarter … until those tanks can really be on Ukrainian territory and go into battle,” he said.
Germany accuses Russia of twisting minister’s comments for ‘propaganda’
Germany’s foreign ministry says Russia twisted comments by Germany’s foreign minister about the war in Ukraine for propaganda purposes, while stressing Berlin’s position that NATO must not become party to the conflict.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock riled Moscow with comments at an event in Strasbourg on Tuesday, when, speaking in English, she said that “we are fighting a war against Russia, and not against each other”.
She spoke the day before the German government announced it was arming Ukraine with advanced Leopard tanks, putting aside earlier reservations about whether such a move could prompt Moscow to escalate the war.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in a post on her Telegram messaging channel cited by the state TASS news agency, seized on Ms Baerbock’s comments as evidence the West was waging a “premeditated war against Russia”.
While Ms Baerbock has often sounded more hawkish than other members of the German cabinet about supporting Ukraine, Berlin has repeatedly stressed that it wants to avoid the NATO alliance becoming a party to the conflict.
This concern was part of the reason for Germany’s delay in agreeing to send the Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
“Russian propaganda continually takes statements, sentences, stances, positions of the government, our partners and uses them to serve their purposes,” a German foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Russia blocks CIA, FBI websites for ‘spreading false information’
Meanwhile, Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor says it has blocked the websites of the CIA and FBI, accusing the two US government agencies of spreading false information, the TASS news agency reported.
“Roskomnadzor has restricted access to a number of resources belonging to state structures of hostile countries for disseminating material aimed at destabilising the social and political situation in Russia,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
TASS quoted the regulator as saying that the two American websites had published inaccurate material and information that had discredited the Russian armed forces.
There was no immediate comment from Washington or from the US embassy in Moscow.
Russia has made it a criminal offence to discredit its armed forces, a crime punishable by up to five years in jail, while knowingly distributing “false information” about the military carries a maximum sentence of 15 years.
Since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February last year, Roskomnadzor has blocked a host of independent media outlets, some foreign news websites and social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
ABC/Reuters