Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksiy Makeev, said that the Ukrainian army will receive a significant number of Leopard 1 tanks in the near future, Ukrainian Pravda reports.

“110 Leopards 1A5. In the near future,” the Ukrainian diplomat wrote on Twitter, posting a photo of one of the tanks and a video apparently shot in a repair shop.

Makeev did not provide more details, but it appears that these are the tanks that the Netherlands announced in February, as well as Germany and Denmark.

On February 3, the German government announced that it had also approved the transfer of Leopard 1 tanks to Kyiv, after making the same move on January 25 for its more modern successor, the Leopard 2.

The executive body in Berlin indicated that it would send Leopard tanks to Ukraine from its own stockpiles, and would also approve transfers from partner countries willing to do so.

This approval was necessary because NATO sales contracts require a member state to obtain the approval of the country where the military equipment was produced in order to be able to transfer or resell it to third parties.

Ukraine finally found out how many Leopard 1 tanks it is getting

If the German government announced that it would hand over a company of 14 combat vehicles to the Ukrainian army regarding Leopard 2 tanks, the number of Leopard 1 that Germany is preparing for Kyiv was initially unknown.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated on February 7 that their number would be at least 100 units, but later information appeared that it would be reduced to only 80 combat vehicles.

These included former Danish Leopards that were decommissioned in 2010 and sold back to the German manufacturer Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft, where they remained in storage.

The Ukrainian military announced on April 28 that its tankers had already started training on Leopard 1 models, and Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said a few days later that they would be ready to be sent to Ukraine by June 1.

Although its design began in the second half of the 1950s and it entered service with the German armed forces in 1965, the Leopard 1 model was considered very successful, with more than 4,000 units produced by 1984, when it was replaced by the Leopard 2.

Despite its age, several NATO countries still have various modernized versions of this tank in service.

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