Arms deliveries – Switzerland blocks cheetah ammunition for Ukraine – News


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Germany wanted to deliver Swiss cheetah ammunition to Kyiv. Bern prevented that. This is shown by Rundschau research.

Well then: Germany is delivering heavy war material to the Ukrainian armed forces for the first time with the Gepard tanks. The heart of the tank from the 1970s consists of Swiss technology: the 35-millimeter twin cannon of the cheetah and the associated ammunition were manufactured by what was then Oerlikon-Bührle. Today the company belongs to the Rheinmetall group.

Ammunition for the cheetah – not for the marten

Last Sunday, Seco confirmed that it had rejected two requests from Germany to transfer ammunition to Ukraine. The federal authority denied rumors that it was ammunition for the Marder tank on Monday. Now the “Rundschau” shows that one of the rejected applications was for ammunition for the Cheetah tank.

The German authorities also wanted to deliver the Swiss ammunition to the Ukrainian soldiers – the plans for this have apparently been going on for a long time: as early as April 6, they contacted the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs Seco in Bern. Their concern: Switzerland should give the green light for the re-export of cheetah ammunition from Germany to the Ukraine. If a country wants to export Swiss war material to another country, it usually has to obtain Switzerland’s consent to do so.

However, Germany did not receive exactly this approval, as “Rundschau” research shows: Seco refused the export to Ukraine with reference to the War Material Ordinance. This prohibits arms and ammunition exports to warring countries. The federal authority has not yet commented on request.

What ammunition is Germany supplying now?

It is unclear which cheetah ammunition Germany is now sending to Ukraine after the no from Bern. It could be ammunition that was exported for re-export without restrictions a long time ago. Or it is ammunition that was partly produced in Switzerland but finished abroad.

In the second case, re-export to the Ukraine would also be possible without Switzerland’s consent – ​​based on an exception in Swiss war material legislation. The German Ministry of Defense, the Rheinmetall Group and the German armaments company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, the designated exporter of the Gepard tanks, have not answered relevant questions from the “Rundschau”.

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