Despite the fact that Germany recently agreed to provide 58PbV 501 (BMP-1) infantry fighting vehicles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the next request of Ukraine was rejected by official Berlin. Germany has refused to provide Ukraine with the Marder infantry fighting vehicles, despite the fact that the country has a surplus of such equipment. This was reported by Militarnyi.

According to the German Die Welt, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov sent a request to Germany to transfer 100 vehicles of the Marder type to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

To this, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht replied: “There is a request for Marder. But all of our own Marder infantry fighting vehicles are committed to NATO, so a decision must also be made within NATO.”

At the same time, it is widely known that in the town of Rockensussra, in Thuringia, there is the largest “cemetery” of military equipment in Europe, which stores a large number of BMP Marder.

At that time, the first Australian Bushmaster PMV armored vehicles have already arrived in Ukraine and were adopted by the Armed Forces. It seems that at the other end of the world they are more sympathetic to the tragedy of our country than those in the almost neighboring country.

Marder (Ukrainian: Куніця) is a German infantry tracked figthing vehicle manufactured by Rheinmetall since 1971. Since 2014, it has been replaced by the Puma IFV from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall Landsysteme. Marder has many modifications and is used by the armies of Germany, Chile, Indonesia and Jordan. In total, more than 2,100 IFVs of this class were manufactured.

Specifications
Mass – 28.5 – 37.4 t (Marder 1A1 / A2 – Marder 1A5)
Length – 6.79 m
Width – 3.24 m
Height – 2.98 m
Engine crew – 3 + 6
Armor – welded steel 20 mm
Main armament: 20mm Rheinmetall MK 20 Rh 202 automatic gun, MILAN air defense missile launcher, 7.62mm MG3 light machine gun.
Engine – Diesel MTU MB 833 Ea-500.
Capacity – 441 kW (591 hp).
Ground clearance – 0.45 m.
Operational range – 520 km
Maximum speed – 75 km / year