Greece wants to station the six Marder armored personnel carriers that have just been delivered by Germany on the border with Turkey. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced on Thursday after a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Athens that the armored personnel carriers would be taken to the border river Evros in the north-east of the country. “Our forces believe that is where they will be most useful,” Mitsotakis said.
Scholz emphasized that the NATO partner is free to station the armored personnel carriers wherever they want. “We delivered the martens to Greece and there is no daily report where they are. We don’t ask either.” Germany is working with Greece in many fields. To question the handling of delivered weapons would be a “very strange approach”.
A few days ago, Germany delivered the first six of a total of 40 martens to Greece as part of a ring exchange to support Ukraine with tanks. The government in Athens undertook to send 40 Soviet-designed BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles to the war zone, which it had once received from East German stocks.
The six tanks are to be presented at a parade in Thessaloniki on Friday – one of the two Greek national holidays. They are then expected to be transported to the border area. At the border with Turkey, Athens had massively strengthened border protection in recent years. The aim is also to prevent migrants from entering the EU.
