Publicly, there has been much gnashing of teeth over the matter of sending main battle tanks to Ukraine. However, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksei Reznikov expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein. “I am very pleased and I thank Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley, the team behind Ramstein, host country, Germany, and the new minister, Mr. Boris [Pistorius],” he told Voice of America’s Ukraine service. “The key words that were important are unity, timeliness, immediacy of providing assistance, building up capabilities of the Armed Forces, the security and defense sectors to continue counteroffensive operations to liberate the occupied territories.”
The military aid was not just limited to the publicly announced packages from the U.S. and other countries, Reznikov says. “Certain packages were announced behind closed doors.”
Reznikov reported that considerable attention was paid at the Contact Group meeting to the strengthening of air defenses. “This issue is seriously developing, and we talked at Ramstein not only about Patriots, but also about other systems,” he said. “We are talking about short-, medium- and long-range systems, including in terms of altitude range.”
Reznikov also told VOA that Ukrainian troops will also begin training on German-made Leopard 2 tanks in Poland, despite the fact that Germany has not yet given permission for the transfer of those tanks to Ukraine. “Countries that already have Leopard tanks can begin training missions for our tank crews. We will start with that, and we will go from there,” he said. Reznikov said he hopes that Germany “will follow their process, conduct their internal consultations, and will arrive at the decision” to send tanks to Ukraine. “I am optimistic regarding this because the first step has been made. We will start training programs for our tank crews on Leopards 2,” he insisted.
