Will France follow suit? On Wednesday January 25, Germany and the United States announced the forthcoming delivery of heavy tanks to Ukraine. After several days of blocking, Berlin gave the green light to the delivery of 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks, while Washington promised kyiv 31 Abrams tanks.
Tank deliveries to Ukraine: which countries have already committed?
The French government has not yet made a decision about sending its own Leclerc heavy tanks, but does not rule it out, as Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne repeated on Wednesday. “Nothing is excluded and we are mobilized to support them over the long term”she said. “Regarding the Leclerc tanks, we are continuing the analysis with the Minister for the Armed Forces. » Earlier in January, Emmanuel Macron announced that France would deliver to Ukraine “AMX-10 RC light battle tanks” of French manufacture.
The reluctance of Paris is explained first by a logistical aspect: the scarcity of armored vehicles. If the army had about 400 Leclerc at the beginning of the 2000s, successive budget cuts led to a reduction in the fleet. Today, the country has just over 220, of which, according to ” the echoes “, a hundred is engaged in a multi-year renovation program, to adapt to the other armored vehicles of the army. According to “Le Canard Enchaîné”, the number of tanks being renovated would even rise to 200.
“We need hundreds”
“Since 1990 and the fall in defense budgets, France has only had 222 of these tanks left, compared to 1,500 heavy tanks 20 or 30 years ago”explains to France info Peer de Jong, vice-president of the Themiis training institute, specialist in geopolitics and former colonel of the marine troops.
Delivery of tanks to Ukraine: the (more or less disinterested) reasons for Macron’s reversal
Two questions then arise: from what volume, will the sending of armored vehicles have a significant effect for Ukraine? And how many Leclercs can France send without impairing the ability of French armored cavalry regiments to operate? “If we give a hundred armored vehicles, that won’t be enough. You need hundreds, with a few dozen you don’t change the balance of power”emphasizes Peer de Jong.
However, the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, recalled on Wednesday one of the fundamental principles of these deliveries: “Do not weaken our defense system. » This complicates the delivery all the more, because the Nexter company has not been manufacturing Leclercs since 2008. Each tank delivered could therefore not be replaced by a new one.
Maintenance difficulty
Moreover, multiplying deliveries of different Western tanks could turn out to be a poisoned gift for Ukraine. Because if the French, German, British or even American models display similarities, they do not have exactly the same characteristics. This could have repercussions on maintenance. Beyond supply, modern tanks indeed require significant logistical support.
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“It is for this reason that the Ukrainians favor the Leopard in their requests: the more their fleet will be composed of the same model, the more it will facilitate the implementation for them. And the Leopard is the tank they are most likely to get in numbers”explains a source to the “ World “.
According to the daily, military experts estimate the number of German-made tanks currently in use in European armies at around 2,000, which is by far the largest contingent. On the contrary, France is the only one to be equipped with Leclerc on the Old Continent.
If the question of sending heavy armored vehicles is not settled, voices are being raised to demand a real democratic debate. “If we had to make such a decision, we cannot do it without a debate in the National Assembly”estimated this Thursday, January 26 on France info the coordinator of La France insoumise, Manuel Bompard, judging this debate necessary to obtain “strategic, military information, which allows us to make informed decisions”. A position shared by the boss of the PCF, Fabien Roussel, who explained on LCI this Thursday that “This decision cannot be made by the president alone”.
