Defence Minister Anita Anand is heading home from a meeting in Germany 

Defence Minister Anita Anand headed home from a meeting in Germany on Friday after she and her counterparts from the United States and across Europe failed to come to an agreement on whether to provide battle tanks to Ukraine.

The question had been at the top of the agenda for the U.S.-led talks at Ramstein airbase, where defence ministers from 50 countries gathered to discuss and co-ordinate plans to give new military aid to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said repeatedly it needs tanks to protect its troops and launch counter-offensives against Russian forces, particularly in the eastern part of the country.

The Trudeau government has not said whether Canada is open to sending some of its German-made Leopard 2 tanks, which were purchased from Germany in 2007 during the height of the war in Afghanistan.

But before Canada can even entertain the idea, it needs Berlin's sign-off to allow it to re-export the tanks to Ukraine, which is not a member of the NATO military alliance.

Germany calls allies' views mixed 

Despite pleas from Ukrainian officials, Germany has so far resisted mounting pressure to quickly supply Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv, or to at least clear the way for other countries, such as Poland, to deliver them from their own stocks.

The defence minister of Poland, which has pledged a company of 14 Leopard tanks on the condition that other countries also supply them, told reporters in Ramstein that 15 countries that have the vehicles talked about the issue but no decisions were made.

Mariusz Blaszczak called the meeting a "good discussion among allies" and said the matter would be discussed again in the future.