Switzerland agrees sale of tanks to backfill Nato stocks

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Switzerland has agreed to export 25 decommissioned Leopard 2 tanks back to Germany after months of diplomatic wrangling over whether such a step would challenge the country’s commitment to neutrality.

Receiving the Swiss-owned tanks will enable the German military to backfill a shortage in its own reserves created by its commitment to send urgently needed heavy armour to Ukraine.

The Swiss export authorisation is conditional on Berlin not sending the vehicles in question on to Kyiv — a legal formulation that finally broke an impasse that infuriated many of Switzerland’s neighbours and led to an increasingly public war of words.

“Germany has given assurances that the tanks sold will remain in Germany or with Nato or EU partners in order to close their own gaps,” the Swiss Federal Council, the country’s executive arm of government, said on Wednesday.

Switzerland’s military operates 134 modernised Leopard 2 tanks and has a further 96 mothballed in storage. It also has 96 Leopard 1 tanks in warehouses in Italy.

As Kyiv’s allies are struggling to put together the numbers needed by Ukraine, the idle Swiss-owned tanks have become a sore point.

The Leopard 1s in Italy have never been in service with the Swiss military, nor even on Swiss soil.

As of mid-November, Germany has been able to send just 30 Leopard 2s to Kyiv.

All of Switzerland’s unused Leopards were originally made by German armsmaker Rheinmetall. The Leopard 1 tanks were sold to Italy, and then onsold to Swiss state-owned arms company Ruag in 2016.

In June, Bern blocked a proposal by European powers to buy some of the Leopard 1 tanks on commercial terms from Ruag, refurbish them, and send them on to Ukraine, citing its legislation restricting arms sales and strict interpretation of neutrality.

It has also refused to sell decommissioned anti-aircraft ammunition it has in its reserves. The ammunition is no longer being manufactured but is needed to restock the 49 Gepard flak guns Berlin has equipped Ukrainian forces with.

“Switzerland is in the worst crisis since the second world war — and is confronted with what neutrality means,” the US ambassador to Bern, Scott Miller, said in March. The government’s block on weapons exports to allies was a mistake, he said, adding, “Switzerland cannot call itself neutral and allow one of both sides to exploit its laws for their own advantage”.

Berlin too, has expressed public irritation with its neighbour. Last year, as the row over Gepard ammunition erupted, parliamentarians called for a freeze to all future weapons purchases from Switzerland, and excoriated the country as a “shirker”.

Berlin’s defence ministry said the government had “campaigned” hard for the agreement, but declined to comment further on what would happen to the tanks after Rheinmetall refurbished them.

The agreement to sell the unused tanks has slowly gained traction owing to Switzerland’s centrist defence minister Viola Amherd.

German defence minister Boris Pistorius and economy minister Robert Habeck formally requested that Switzerland consider selling Leopards back to Rheinmetall in February.

Amherd wrote back that a sale of vehicles that would be sent on to Ukraine directly was legally impossible. Instead, she proposed the backfilling solution, permissible if assurances could be provided about their future use by Nato only for its own defence.

In Switzerland, opposition to exporting military equipment that might help Ukraine — even if indirectly — still runs deep.

The country’s largest party, the rightwing populist SVP, has opposed the plan to sell the 25 tanks to Germany. The deal is “very questionable in terms of neutrality policy”, said Werner Salzmann, who is president of the security committee of the Council of States, Switzerland’s upper house of parliament, and an SVP politician.

Alain Berset, a social democrat and Switzerland’s current president, also advocates a strict interpretation of neutrality.

In March he accused other western countries of indulging in a “war frenzy” to try and bully Switzerland into supporting Ukraine.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Switzerland’s 96 unused Leopard 2 tanks were stored in Italy. They are in Switzerland, and the 96 unused tanks kept in Italy are Leopard 1s.