Maintenance and Service Center for Ukraine’s Leopard 2 will open in Poland

Berlin, Kyiv and Warsaw will establish the Leopard 2 Tank Maintenance and Service Center for the Ukrainian Army in Poland. The announcement was made by Oleksii Reznikov, Minister of Defense of Ukraine. During the Ramstein meeting, a session of the tank coalition was held on April 21.

The defense ministers of Ukraine, Poland and Germany signed a Letter of Intent for the creation of a tank maintenance hub. "This will help strengthen our cooperation and the capabilities of Ukrainian defenders," Reznikov wrote.

Ministers of Defense of Germany, Ukraine and Poland. April 2023.

Germany. Photo credits: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

The Polish minister urged his colleagues to create a tank maintenance hub in the city of Gliwice. "Bumar (Bumar-Labedy is an arms manufacturer - ed.) in Gliwice has 20 years of experience in maintaining and repairing the Leopard tanks, so their personnel are prepared," Mariusz Blaszczak emphasized.

According to him, in order to fund the functioning of the hub, an appropriate fund needs to be created. He also did not rule out attracting funds from the EU and NATO to finance the tank hub.

Mariusz Blaszczak, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Poland

In Poland, there is already a ?-64 tank service center for Ukraine at the Bumar-Labedy plant in Gliwice. They also plan to repair ?-72 and ??-9 tanks in the future.

The agreement provides that Ukrainian tanks will be serviced and put into full operation.

As previously reported, during the meeting of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine in the Ramstein format on Friday, April 21, a meeting of the heads of defense ministries of the participant countries of the tank coalition took place.