Despite Berlin’s refusal to give green light to sending German Leopard tanks to Ukraine at the recent Ramstein summit, the matter remains open as Chancellor Olaf Soltz faces mounting pressure from both Germany’s allies and within his own government.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said yesterday that his country would seek, as it should, Germany’s permission to send Berlin-supplied Leopard tanks to Kyiv, but signaled that Warsaw could continue the delivery even if the response was negative. .

“Even if we do not get approval, we can send our tanks along with other countries to Ukraine. The condition for us, as we see it at the moment, is the creation of at least a small alliance of countries that will move in concert,” Morawiecki said.

During yesterday’s meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers decided to provide Ukraine with the seventh package of military assistance in the amount of 500 million euros. However, the dominant theme these days is the deployment of heavy tanks. So far, only the UK has pledged to send 14 Challenger tanks, which Kyiv considers rather symbolic. “We need tanks… Not 10-20, but several hundred,” Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential staff of Ukraine, stressed yesterday.

We will not stand in the way of our allies sending German tanks, said Greens Foreign Minister Analena Burbock.

On Sunday, German Foreign Minister Analena Bourbock said her country would not prevent third countries from sending Leopards to Ukraine. Speaking to the French channel LCI TV from Paris and asking about Poland’s intention to send the Leopard without Berlin’s permission, she said: “At the moment this issue has not been raised, but if it is raised, we will not stop them.”

However, it remains unclear whether Burbock’s position represents only her party, the Greens, or the entire three-party coalition supporting the Soltz government. Green and Free Democrats are in favor of providing Kyiv with heavy weapons, but the German chancellor’s Social Democratic Party is more cautious, fearing a dangerous escalation of the war. Arriving at yesterday’s meeting of her European colleagues in Brussels, Analena Berbock was asked if her position was expressed by the entire German government, but she declined to answer.

Bourbock’s Sunday statements were made on the sidelines of the Franco-German summit in Paris. At a joint press conference with Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Soltz avoided expressing a clear position on whether to send the Leopard to Ukraine or not. For his part, the French president left open the possibility of sending French Leclerc tanks without assuming any obligations.

Commenting on European hesitations and disagreements on the issue, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they are indicative of “growing nervousness” within NATO. Much louder, Russian parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close associate of President Putin, warned that offensive arms supplies to Ukraine could lead to a “global catastrophe,” hinting at the possible use of nuclear weapons. “The argument that the nuclear powers did not use weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts in the past is untenable, since these states did not face a direct threat to their citizens and the territorial integrity of their countries” (for example, Russia), Volodin said. Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Estonian ambassador yesterday and asked him to leave the country by February 7 due to a sharp reduction in the number of the Russian embassy in Tallinn. Estonians called on the Russian ambassador to leave their country with diplomatic return fire. As a sign of solidarity with Estonia, Latvia also decided to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Russia.

Scandal at the FBI

The former high-ranking FBI official has been arrested in the US on charges that he was paid by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, to remove him from a US Justice Department blacklist and avoid charges against him. sanctions. This is Charles McGonigal, 55, who served as head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and retired in September 2018. McGonigal was charged with money laundering, violating sanctions against Russia and other offenses in a federal court in Manhattan in New York. Deripaska was on a list of 24 Russians compiled by Washington who he believes were involved in attempts to influence the 2016 presidential race. Meanwhile, McGonigal faces a second indictment in Washington federal court on charges of hiding a $225,000 bribe. Albanian agent, as well as the contacts he had with the leaders of Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia, where the said agent had business interests.