Germany wants the help of Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the president who offered solidarity to Vladimir Putin’s Russia a week before the February invasion of Ukraine, to make it possible to deliver anti-aircraft tanks to Kiev to defend itself against Moscow.
The United States’ most visible political victory in its effort to involve NATO’s most reticent members in the Ukrainian War, the deployment of the Flakpanzer Gepards was announced on Tuesday (26), but stalls in the lack of ammunition for the 1970s model, which Berlin ceased operations in 2010.
In 2013, the Brazilian Army bought 34 Gepard version 1A2s from Germany, aiming at the safety of major events: the World Youth Day with the then new Pope Francis, the Confederations Cup and the 2014 Cup.
According to people with knowledge of the matter, they told the Sheetthe Army had sought out Germany to resell the armored vehicles after that, without success, and even offered them to Qatar — which ended up buying 15 units from Berlin to use to protect the World Cup stadiums in November.
Now, the Germans have again probed the Brazilian government, but there is no definition. Officially, the intention did not reach the Army, which operates the armored vehicles.
“The Army Social Communication Center informs that, to date, the Brazilian Army has not received any request for the supply of ammunition from the Gepard anti-aircraft system to Germany, in order to be sent to Ukraine”, said the Force.
Sought after, the Itamaraty has not responded so far on the matter. In any case, as a diplomat in Brasilia said, it is highly unlikely that the Bolsonaro government would make such a deal given its position of critical neutrality to the war.
In addition to the president’s untimely visit to Putin on the eve of the conflict, which generated unease with the US and internally, Brazil condemned both the invasion and the sanctions imposed on Russia when voting on the issue at the UN.
More importantly, with an eye on maintaining the flow of Russian fertilizers to the country, in addition to other businesses, it did not adhere to any Western punishment, thus being off the list of Moscow’s adversaries.
Besides Brazil, only Jordan (60 armored vehicles) and Romania (36), which is a member of NATO (western military alliance), operate the vehicle.
The case had been revealed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Bild periodicals, and the situation seems vexing for Germany, which had been resisting sending heavier material to Kiev due to its vaunted dependence on gas and oil from Russia, which despite all sanctions continue to flow into the country.
When Russia announced the cut of natural gas 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 of Gazprom (Russian gas state) in Switzerland, as demanded Putin to value his national currency.
The problem is that KMW, maker of the Gepard, which has about 50 in stock, according to the newspapers, only has 23,000 35 mm cartridges used by the model’s guns against low-altitude air targets. With a rate of 1,100 rounds per minute, that’s just over 20 minutes of operation in just one armored vehicle.
To complicate matters, the Swiss government said it would not allow the export of ammunition held by Germany. The Gepard’s cannons are made in the Alpine country by Oerlikon, and the authorization is stipulated in a contract with the Germans. Switzerland remains neutral in the war despite having adopted economic sanctions against Moscow.
The newspapers, as well as the American agency Bloomberg, only cited conversations with Brazil and the Arab countries, assuming that Switzerland would not protest, curiously leaving Romania aside. The reports speak of the acquisition of 300,000 cartridges, which would also require savings in shots.
“If the German Defense Ministry fails to acquire ammunition in the next few days, Ukraine will probably have to refuse the offer,” Kiev’s ambassador to Germany, Andjij Melnik, told German N-TV on Wednesday.
The Gepard is the chassis of an old Leopard-1 tank with a turret with two cannons. It is used for point defense, as in the case of World Cup stadiums, or to cover columns of moving armored vehicles — a likely job in Ukraine, where Russian Su-25 attack planes fly very low.
Brazil’s intention to get rid of the Gepard stems from the obsolescence of the models and the fact that the country does not have a cohesive air defense, something that is currently being studied. Today, it operates portable Russian missiles and these cannons, which are insufficient to deter more serious threats.
