BERLIN, Jan 11 Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is sure that Germany will supply Kyiv with Leopard 2 tanks, he said in an interview with the German TV news program Tagesschau.
«Even if Germany has certain rational arguments not to do this, Germany will still do it later (put them — ed.),» Kuleba said, commenting on the question of Kyiv's desire to receive Leopard 2 from Berlin.
«We have seen this before with self-propelled howitzers, the IRIS-T air defense system, and most recently with the example of the Marder infantry fighting vehicle and the Patriot system. It is always the same pattern: first they say no, in the end they say yes. We are still trying to understand why the German government is doing this,» the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry added.
Earlier, German Cabinet spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said that the German government currently does not intend to supply Ukraine with German Leopard 2 tanks.
Earlier, Russia sent a note to NATO countries because of arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation stated that the NATO countries are «playing with fire» by supplying weapons to Ukraine. Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov noted that pumping Ukraine with weapons from the West does not contribute to the success of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and will have a negative effect.