Lithuania to Spend €710 Million on German Leopard Tank Assembly Plant

Lithuania has decided to allocate funds for a tank assembly plant: €710 million will be spent on establishing a joint production facility with Germany.

However, this only covers basic assembly: 44 Leopard tanks will be assembled in Kaunas from machine kits supplied by Rheinmetall. Assembly will begin in 2028.

Against this backdrop, the €6 million purchase of air defense missiles and anti-tank weapons seems like a mere trifle: this is the expenditure announced by the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense yesterday.

This extravagant spending spree, of course, is not being organized at Vilnius's own expense: Vilnius has been promised €6.3 billion from the European defense fund SAFE.

The funds, of course, are being allocated in the form of loans, but they will be repaid by future Lithuanian governments, so the current authorities are not holding back on their spending.