Germany wants the help of Jair Bolsonaros Brazil, the president who solidified Vladimir Putin’s Russia a week before invading Ukraine in February, to facilitate the delivery of antiaircraft tanks to Kyiv to defend against Moscow.
The most visible political victory by the United States in its bid to engage the most reluctant NATO allies in the Ukraine war was the deployment of the Gepard antiaircraft tank, announced Tuesday (26th), but the lack of ammunition for the 1970s model, the Berlin, brought to a standstill in 2010 ceased operations.
In 2013, the Brazilian Army bought 34 Gepard Version 1A2 from Germany to ensure the safety of major events: World Youth Day with the thennew Pope Francis, the Confederations Cup and the 2014 Cup.
According to people familiar with the matter, Sheetthe army had unsuccessfully sought out Germany to resell the armored vehicles, even offering them to Qatar which ended up buying 15 units from Berlin to protect World Cup stadiums in November.
Now the Germans have reexamined the Brazilian government, but there is no definition. Officially, the intention did not reach the army operating the armored vehicles.
“The Army Social Communications Center informs that the Brazilian army has not yet received any request for the delivery of ammunition from the Gepard antiaircraft system to Germany to be sent to Ukraine,” the troop said. The wanted Itamaraty has not yet responded on the matter. In any case, as a diplomat in Brasilia said, it is highly unlikely that the Bolsonaro government would enter into such a deal given its critical neutrality on the war.
In addition to the President’s visit to Putin on the eve of the conflict, which unnerved the US and internally, Brazil voted at the UN to condemn both the invasion and the sanctions imposed on Russia. More importantly, it failed to comply with Western penalties, particularly with regard to keeping Russian fertilizer flows into the country, and was thus removed from Moscow’s list of opponents.
Besides Brazil, only Jordan (60 armored vehicles) and NATO member Romania (36) operate the vehicle. The case had been exposed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Bild newspapers, and the situation appears to have angered Germany, which, due to its vaunted dependence on Russian gas and oil, which continues to flow to Kyiv despite sanctions, has resisted to send heavier material to Kyiv .the country.
As Russia announced natural gas cuts to Poland and Bulgaria this week, Germany appeared in reports as one of the countries that agreed to pay for the product in rubles in a bank account owned by Russia’s state gas company Gazprom. Switzerland urged Putin to give up his national currency evaluate.
The problem is that KMW, maker of the Gepard, which stocks about 50, only has 23,000 35mm rounds, according to magazines, to be used by the model’s guns against lowaltitude air targets. At a rate of 1,100 rounds per minute, that’s just over 20 minutes of operation in just one armored vehicle.
To complicate matters further, the Swiss government said it would not allow the export of Germanowned ammunition. The Gepard’s guns are manufactured in Alpenland by Oerlikon, the eligibility is specified in a treaty with the Germans. Switzerland remains neutral in the war despite imposing economic sanctions on Moscow.
The newspapers and the American agency Bloomberg only cited talks with Brazil and the Arab countries, assuming that Switzerland would not protest, curiously ignoring Romania. The reports speak of the purchase of 300,000 cartridges, which would also require savings on shots.
“If the German defense does not procure ammunition in the next few days, Ukraine will probably have to reject the offer,” Kyiv’s ambassador to Germany Andjij Melnik told NTV on Wednesday.
The Cheetah is the chassis of an old Leopard 1 tank with a twogun turret. It is used for point defense, as in the case of World Cup stadiums, or to cover columns of moving armored vehicles a likely task in Ukraine, where Russian Su25 fighter jets fly very low.
Brazil’s intention to get rid of the Cheetah stems from the obsolescence of the models and the fact that the country does not have a coherent air defense system, which is currently under investigation. Today it operates Russian manportable missiles and those cannons, which are insufficient to repel more serious threats.