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Germany has delayed a decision about whether to extend the stationing of Patriot missile systems in Poland amid new tensions with Warsaw about how to repair jointly Leopard tanks engaged in Ukraine.
German defence minister Boris Pistorius visited Poland on Monday but did not explicitly address a Polish request to keep the Patriots in place for at least another six months, even as he underlined that Berlin considered they were making “an essential contribution” to regional security.
Instead, Pistorius called on Warsaw to resolve within 10 days a dispute over a new joint repair hub for German Leopard tanks in Poland, which was announced in April at an estimated cost of €150mn.
His Polish counterpart Mariusz Błaszczak said the Patriots should stay until at least the end of the year. “We appreciate the presence of these batteries on Polish soil,” Błaszczak told a joint news conference with Pistorius.
Pistorius called the tank negotiations “complex,” but he stressed that a solution must be found quickly.
The repair hub project has been hit by financial and operational disagreements among the German tank makers Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and the Polish state-controlled arms producer Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ), the German current affairs magazine Der Spiegel reported.
“Germany is ready to take responsibility, one way or the other, and that is why we believe that the talks should be concluded within the next 10 days, if possible, so that we know which direction to take,” Pistorius said. “Let’s be clear, repair is an essential part of sustainable support for Ukraine.”
Błaszczak said that from the Polish side, there was “full openness . . . because we want to support Ukraine, to co-operate in this field with our German neighbour”.
But even though the two neighbours are seeking to smooth over tensions fuelled by the war in Ukraine, their tank repair dispute is adding to a long list of recent disagreements. This comes at a time when western powers want to display unity to thwart Vladimir Putin, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine is forcing Nato to bolster its eastern flank.
Germany recently committed to stationing permanently 4,000 troops in Lithuania. A discussion about the alliance’s next eastern reinforcements is expected during a Nato summit in Vilnius later this month.
Last year Poland was one of the countries that raised the pressure on Germany to deliver its Leopard tanks, also to help replace Soviet-made tanks sent to Ukraine. The Polish campaign irked officials in Berlin who argued that they needed to act cautiously on a decision that could escalate the conflict or provoke Moscow.
The Patriot deployment has itself been the subject of tensions.
German officials were irritated last year when, after offering Patriot systems to Poland, Błaszczak said that they should be given to Ukraine instead.
German-Polish military co-operation has also been overshadowed by broader political feuding, amplified after Warsaw’s rightwing government filed last October a claim against Germany for €1.3tn in reparations for damages and losses inflicted by the Nazis during the second world war.
To modernise and replenish its own military, Poland has ordered billions of dollars of weapons from the US and South Korea. Last week Warsaw received the first 14 tanks of a large batch of Abrams tanks set to be delivered from the US over the coming two years. The Abrams are expected to be serviced at a new maintenance centre in Poznań, where the US recently opened its first permanent base in Poland.
But the servicing of Leopard tanks also underlines financial concerns in Warsaw that the bill for bolstering Nato’s eastern flank is not being shared fairly with west Europeans. While the Polish government aims to spend 4 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence this year, double Nato’s target, larger countries like Germany and France are still falling short of 2 per cent — though Berlin says it will meet the target next year. German officials also point out that their country is now one of the world’s largest suppliers of weapons to Kyiv, with support including a Patriot system that arrived in Ukraine in April.
Pistorius visited on Monday the German soldiers who have been operating since January Patriot batteries in Zamość, near Poland’s border with Ukraine, in what is the most significant German military presence in Poland since the second world war.
The German minister said that the Zeitenwende — or watershed moment — in Germany’s approach to defence and security announced by chancellor Olaf Scholz in the days after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was “not just about spending more money on [defence] procurement”.
“It is also about taking action and working side by side with our eastern partners to protect our common security interests,” he said.
Additional reporting by Barbara Erling in Warsaw