Prime Minister António Costa announced this Wednesday that Portugal is implementing a maintenance plan for Leopard 2 tanks and that it could deliver three tanks to Ukraine next March.
“We are currently implementing the Leopard 2 tank recovery and maintenance plan, and in accordance with the plan, we can save three tanks next March,” António Costa told Parliament.
The Prime Minister responded to MP Bernardo Blanco of the Liberal Initiative during the preparatory debate for the European Council in Parliament.
Moments earlier, PAN’s only member, Inés Souza Real, asked the Prime Minister if Portugal would send additional humanitarian aid in addition to those planned to Turkey and Syria after the earthquake, and also asked the Chief Executive. about supporting Ukraine in terms of the possible supply of aircraft.
“Yes, we are going to send humanitarian aid not only to Turkey and Syria, but also a mission is sent to Chile to support this country in the fight against forest fires. And this circumstance is a very important opportunity for us to accelerate all the mechanisms of the green transition and, fortunately, this is happening,” he replied.
Chega leader André Ventura took the opportunity to ask António Costa if he retains political confidence in Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho, who was in the parliamentary defense committee this morning, to answer questions related to the dispute over the costs of the former military hospital. Henbane.
Ventura felt that Cravigno, who was secretary of defense from 2018 to 2022, “is a bubble about to burst” and pointed to “incoherence and inconsistency”.
“Indeed, for you, no one will have a place in this government, because, frankly, it is against the existence of this government,” replied Costa, who abandoned Ventura, who creates the executive branch, by his standards, and not “by the standards” of Chief Chegi .
“And that’s it, I think that we were both equally satisfied, and each performs its function,” he concluded.
On 4 February, at the end of a visit to the Portuguese military mission in the Central African Republic, Prime Minister Luce assured in statements that Portugal would transfer the Leopard 2 tanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and added that he was in a logistical operation with Germany to return several tanks.
On this occasion, António Costa also tried to point out that sending tanks to Ukraine would not jeopardize the national military power in terms of equipment.
According to the prime minister, Portugal is working with Germany to “allow a logistics operation to supply parts in order to complete the restoration of some vehicles.” [de combate] that were not in working order.
Regarding the controversy that several of these Leopard 2 tanks, acquired by the Armed Forces in 2007, have been out of service for many years, the Prime Minister objected that the expression “many years” is an exaggeration.
“Some of them do not work, and it is for this reason that we must work simultaneously with those who produce, in order to ensure the necessary supply chain, in order to restore tanks that are currently inoperative, and be able to abandon healthy tanks, leaving us with our own facilities, properly secured. It is this logistical operation that continues,” he explained.
On January 20, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (CEMGFA), Admiral Silva Ribeiro, indicated that Portugal had 37 Leopard tanks.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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