But the chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision last week on the Leopard 2s, which opened the floodgates for other European countries to follow suit, has opened up new possibilities. The Leopard 1, which is from the 1960s, is lighter and less powerful than the newer Leopard 2 tanks, 14 of which Germany agreed last week to send to Ukraine, but German officials have said they would still be able to compete with a Russian battle tank.įor years, Versluys was unable to sell the Leopard 1s and Gepards as German law requires approval from Berlin for the re-export of its military equipment. “But buying those decommissioned tanks was a massive gamble for us. “It was the market price because of the geopolitical situation at the time,” he said.
In one of Versluys’s bigger deals, he bought 50 Leopard 1 tanks that the Belgian government decommissioned in 2014 for €37,000 each (about £29,600). The defence cuts were accelerated by the 2008 economic crisis, and by 2014, the year Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, European military spending had reached a historic low. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, European nations have sought to replace some of the heavy and costly-to-maintain cold war-era tanks with the lighter vehicles needed for shorter peacekeeping missions around the world.
Versluys bought up most of his current stock over the last two decades, acquiring the tanks directly from European governments cutting their defence spending. Walking Tournai’s narrow, cobblestoned back streets and boulevards, it is hard to imagine that such weapons are only a 15-minute walk away. Austrian-flagged hardware in the OIP hangar.
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