Leopard 2 and STRV 122 Tanks Refurbished in Lithuania for Ukraine

Lithuania Defense Services (LDS) has refurbished two tanks—a Leopard 2 and an STRV 122—and will send them to Ukraine in the near future.

Lithuania Defense Services reported on the handover ceremony.

LDS, based in Lithuania, is restoring damaged Leopard-family tanks and returning them to Ukraine.

“It is very important to us that the tanks return to the battlefield as soon as possible, because despite the era of drones, armored vehicles remain particularly important and necessary when retaking occupied territories during operations that involve these very same drones,” Olha Nikitchenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Lithuania, noted.

“Germany has become Ukraine’s largest bilateral partner in Europe, and together with Germany, we are fully funding the LDS project and the modernization of Ukrainian tanks,” Cornelius Zimmermann, German Ambassador to Lithuania, emphasized.

LDS is a joint venture between the German defense industry companies Rheinmetall and KNDS, established in 2022 in Lithuania to provide maintenance and repair services for NATO allies’ military equipment.

The systems serviced include:

• Boxer Vilkas;
• PzH 2000;
• the Leopard tank family;
• and tactical transport vehicles.

In Lithuania, in collaboration with the German defense industry, repairs of Ukrainian Leopard tanks began in October 2023.

Lithuania unveiled the first pair of Ukrainian Leopard 2 tanks repaired there on December 15, 2023.

In January 2024, LDS signed a contract with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to improve spare-parts logistics for German armored vehicles in Ukraine.

Lithuania is interested in local production of tanks in this family—in March, the country allocated approximately EUR 700 million to purchase 44 Leopard 2A8 tanks and support the local assembly of German tanks.

The Finnish company YIT will build a production and service complex for Leopard 2A8 tanks in Kaunas, Lithuania, by November 2027. It announced plans for the construction last December.

The Ukrainian military has actively used the Leopard since 2023.

On May 5, the Ukrainian military deployed German tanks during training exercises, where crews practiced firing from covered positions.