How a parts shortage and corporate infighting hamper efforts to repair Ukraine's Leopard tanks

High prices, corporate rivalries and a shortage of spare parts hobbled efforts this spring to set up a new repair facility in Poland for Ukraine's Leopard tanks — and in some cases have limited the usefulness of the donated Western vehicles, CBC News has learned.

Poland, Germany and Canada began discussions back in the spring to set up a maintenance hub for dozens of armoured vehicles donated to the embattled Eastern European country.

The sophisticated main battle tanks were touted in western capitals as a war-winning strategy — one that would help Ukrainians turn the tide and drive Russian troops out of the country.

An existing state-owned Polish defence contractor in the city of Gliwice, west of Krakow in southern Poland, finally began receiving battle-damaged Ukrainian Leopard tanks this summer. NATO officials also have talked about establishing another repair base even closer to the border with Ukraine, in Rzeszów.

But the Gliwice facility was slow to get started because of a shortage of spare parts for the in-demand weapons.

The Polish armaments firm operating the plant — Bumar Labedy SA, a division of the state-owned Polish Armaments Group — has pointed the finger at the German manufacturers of the Leopard 2: Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (which makes the chassis) and Rheinmatell (which makes the cannon).

The Polish firm claims the German companies' refusal to share the intellectual property rights for the various components caused the parts shortage and drove up the cost of repairs.

Gustav Gressel, a defence expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations who served in the Austrian army, said allied governments' efforts to get industry to speed up the pace of repairs have been "dysfunctional" to date.

He warned the situation could put Ukraine's war effort at risk.

"It's been quite a quagmire on multiple fronts, unfortunately," he said. "Personally, I thought that the war in Ukraine would actually make all these people a bit more solution-oriented in their thinking, because it's a war at our doorstep."

Half a dozen separate senior sources — Canadians, Ukrainians and European Union citizens working in the defence, diplomatic and business worlds who are familiar with the file but are not authorized to comment publicly — spoke to CBC News for this story.

CBC's request to interview Defence Minister Bill Blair was declined.

A number of countries, including Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal and Poland, pledged earlier this year to donate Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

More than 70 of them had been delivered as of August 2023, according to a recent report in Forbes Magazine which quoted a Ukrainian soldier. It's believed five were completely destroyed in this summer's counteroffensive and 10 others have been damaged.