Poland has supplied Ukraine with a number of tanks, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced on Monday, without offering details as to their number or type. This would make Poland the third NATO country to have armed Ukraine with tanks, after the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Earlier this month, the UK offered some of its tanks to Poland as replacements.
“Poland delivered the tanks to Ukraine, but for the sake of our safety and that of the Ukrainians, we are not disclosing the amount of equipment donated at the moment,” Morawiecki said in an interview with Polsat News.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered a clue as to the type of tanks last week, when he said London had offered Warsaw some of its own tanks “to help them as they send some of their T-72 tanks to Ukraine.”
The US and its allies have poured hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and ammunition into Ukraine since Russian troops crossed the border on February 24. The two NATO states insisted they are not party to the conflict but publicly declared their commitment to Russian defeat.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Czechia, Slovakia, and Slovenia have all sent tanks to Ukraine – whether some version of the Soviet-designed T-72 or the very similar Yugoslav M-84, both of which the Ukrainian troops would know how to operate more easily than any Western models.