Morocco has sent tanks to Ukraine to boost its counter-offensive against Russian forces, the Algerian news outlet Menadefense has revealed.
Nearly 20 T-72B tanks have reportedly been supplied to Kyiv forces, making Rabat the first African nation to send armored vehicles to the war-torn country.
According to the report, the Czech defense firm Excalibur Army modernized the tanks before shipping them to Ukraine.
20 tanks were sent to the battlefield a week ago, after their modernization in the Czech Republic. The Kingdom of Morocco was the first in Africa to provide military assistance to our country. It’s hard to understand how Germany can’t send tanks pic.twitter.com/LTEUAu14w5
— Frédéric Provencher (@profcaillou) January 22, 2023
The first sighting of the Moroccan T-72B tanks being refitted for the Ukrainian army came during a visit by Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala to the company’s Sternberk site.
The vehicle turrets had the original colors of the Moroccan army.
Morocco currently operates more than 140 T-72, 130 T-72B and 12 T-72BK acquired from Belarus in 1999 and 2000.
‘moral imperative’
Last week, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that providing Ukraine with high-performance tanks to fight Russia is a “moral imperative.”
It also sends a message that Western countries have the strategic resilience to continue supporting Ukraine “until the job is done.”
However, despite the increasing number of countries sending armored vehicles to Kyiv, they are still waiting for German Leopard 2 tanks.
A decision on whether or not Berlin would finally heed Ukraine’s request was supposed to be published last week, but German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said his country needed more time.
“There are good reasons for surrender and there are good reasons against it. And given the general situation of a war that has been going on for almost a year, all the pros and cons have to be weighed very carefully, and many allies explicitly share that assessment,” Pistorius told reporters.
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