BY MICHAEL BARUAH, OUR NORTH AMERICA CORRESPONDENT.
Poland has sent more than 200 Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukraine in recent weeks, Poland’s national broadcaster, Polskie Radio, reported Friday, as Kyiv’s backers, including the United States, deliver heavy weaponry to help repel a Russian offensive in the east.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed earlier this week the dispatch of tanks across the border, but he declined to elaborate, including on the number of vehicles.
Ukraine and former Warsaw Pact countries still use many Soviet weapons. Since Russia launched its war on Ukraine, some Eastern European countries have deployed their equipment to Kyiv in exchange for other materiel from Western governments.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced this month that his country could help “backfill” by sending tanks to Poland as the Poles supply neighboring Ukraine with the Soviet-era tanks. Meanwhile, Slovakia provided Ukraine with the S-300 antiaircraft missile defense system after the United States offered to replace it with the more advanced Patriot system, The Washington Post reported.