Ottawa: Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand is set to announce that his country will be sending four battle tanks to Ukraine.
In addition to the initial four Leopard 2 tanks, Canada is considering sending more tanks at a later date, CTV News reported, citing government sources.
The Canadian Armed Forces currently has 82 German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks, but they are in various states of serviceability, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the report.
On Wednesday, Germany and the US announced they would be organising the shipment of dozens of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
The most radical changes are on the inside, which has been redesigned to take advantage of new technology. The control mechanisms are digitized, most notably a new inter-vehicle information system that allows vehicles to exchange information continuously and automatically. Using the new technology, commanders can rapidly track the location of friendly vehicles, identify enemy positions and process artillery requests.
But federal policy forbids the export of Abrams with classified armor packages used by the U.S. military, which includes depleted uranium, according to a fourth person with knowledge of the policy. The U.S. strips the vehicles of this secret armor “recipe” before selling them to other countries. There are other armor packages the U.S. can provide for foreign military sales customers.
The Pentagon is planning to provide Ukraine the A2 version in this “exportable” form, according to one defense official and two other people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Questions remain over the timeline of when the Abrams tanks can be delivered to Ukraine. The tanks are assembled in one place only — a government-owned, General Dynamics-operated plant in Lima, Ohio. That facility can produce 12 tanks per month, but the line is now full of new tank orders for Taiwan and Poland — orders it would be difficult and likely controversial to put on the backburner.
The Army is providing multiple options for senior leaders to determine the way ahead, the service’s acquisition chief, Doug Bush, told reporters Wednesday.
Poland has ordered 250 A2 tanks that will be delivered starting in 2025, but in the meantime is receiving an emergency infusion of 116 M1A1 tanks recently retired by the Marine Corps. Warsaw asked for the tanks to quickly replace the 250 Soviet-era T-72 tanks it gave Ukraine last year, and the shuttering of the Marine Corps tank units made hundreds of well-maintained tanks available immediately.
Taiwan ordered 108 M1A2 tanks in 2019, and the first are expected to be delivered in 2024.
General Dynamics no longer builds the M1 from scratch, but has a number of “M1 seed vehicles” that are bare-bone tanks. When new orders come in, General Dynamics modifies these seed vehicles with new technology depending on which variant is selected.
But these upgrades are not “easy or fast,” Bush said.
Rather than sending Ukraine tanks from its own stocks, as it has done with previous weapons, the U.S. has said it is buying the Abrams from industry, meaning they won’t arrive on the battlefield for many months, or potentially years, given industrial constraints in upgrading them. In the meantime, the U.S. will train Ukrainian forces on how to maintain and operate the tanks, as well as “combined arms maneuver” tactics to help them integrate the weapons into their overall operations.
Either Abrams version would be a significant upgrade from the Soviet-era tanks Ukraine now operates, in firepower, accuracy and armor. But once they arrive, Ukrainian forces will be challenged to keep them in operation, experts said.
Those challenges are why the Biden administration pushed the delivery of German-made Leopard tanks, which are easier to maintain and train on. The first Leopards from Germany and other European countries will likely start arriving in Ukraine this spring.
Unlike other tanks that use diesel, the Abrams has a jet turbine engine that guzzles JP-8 jet fuel, which is more expensive and harder to maintain. They are also tricky to maintain, and any crew error could trigger the engine to blow.
Meanwhile, they require a massive infrastructure, including M88 recovery vehicles to repair broken parts on the battlefield, to operate.
“The M1 is a complex weapon system that is challenging to maintain, as we’ve talked about,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday. “That was true yesterday; it’s true today; it will be true in the future.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
A man walks by a sign that reads “to Moscow” placed on an old tank displayed at a war museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
KYIV: Ukrainian officials said Thursday that Russia has launched a wave of missile and self-exploding drone attacks on the country.
Air raid sirens wailed nationwide, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or of the missiles and drones striking targets.
The head of the Kyiv city administration said that 15 cruise missiles were shot down.
Serhii Popko said the missiles were fired “in the direction of Kyiv” but did not clarify if the capital itself was a target. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions were heard in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district, on the east side of the river that divides the city.
The attacks came after Germany and the United States announced Wednesday that they will send advanced battle tanks to Ukraine, offering what one expert called an “armored punching force” to help Kyiv break combat stalemates as the Russian invasion enters its 12th month.
Washington: US President Joe Biden announced that Washington is sending 31 heavy M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as part of Washington’s continued support for the war-torn nation.
The US-made military vehicle is one of the most modern battle tanks in the world and requires extensive training to operate.
Addressing reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Biden said the decision to send the tanks came after his conversation earlier in the day “with our NATO Allies — German Chancellor (Olaf) Scholz, French President (Emmanuel) Macron, UK Prime Minister (Rishi) Sunak, and the Italian Prime Minister (Giorgia) Meloni — to continue our close coordination in our full support of Ukraine”.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin expected Europe and the US to weaken our resolve… He was wrong from the beginning and he continues to be wrong,” he said.
According to the President, a Ukrainian tank battalion typically consists of 31 tanks, which is why that number has been agreed upon.
“The Abrams tanks are the most capable tanks in the world. They’re also extremely complex to operate and maintain, so we’re also giving Ukraine the parts and equipment necessary to effectively sustain these tanks on the battlefield,” he said.
Biden’s announcement came just hours after Germany said it would send 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks to the battlefield.
Berlin also cleared the way for other European countries to send German-made tanks from their own stocks.
In his address, Biden said he was grateful to Chancellor Scholz for providing German Leopard 2 tanks and will lead an effort to organise the European contribution of two tank battalions for Ukraine.
“I want to thank the Chancellor for his leadership and his steadfast commitment to our collective efforts to support Ukraine. Germany has really stepped up, and the Chancellor has been a strong, strong voice for unity, a close friend, and for the level of effort we’re going to continue.”
Besides the US and Germany, the UK had recently announced that it was donating Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, while rance is contributing AMX-10s, armoured fighting vehicles.
In addition to the Leopard tanks, Germany is also sending a Patriot missile battery and the Netherlands is donating a Patriot missile and launchers.
France, Canada, the UK, Slovakia and Norway have all donated critical air defence systems.
Biden also said that “Poland is sending armoured vehicles, Sweden is donating infantry fighting vehicles, Italy is giving artillery, Denmark and Estonia are sending howitzers, Latvia is providing more Stinger missiles, Lithuania is providing anti-aircraft guns, and Finland recently announced its largest package of security assistance to date”.
“Together with our allies and partners, we’ve sent more than 3,000 armoured vehicles, more than 8,000 artillery systems, more than 2 million rounds of artillery ammunition, and more than 50 advanced multi-launch rocket systems, anti-ship and air defence systems, all to help Ukraine counter brutal aggression that is happening because of Russia,” he added.
The twin announcements by the US and Germany was hailed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who said it was a turning point that would allow its military to regain momentum and take back occupied territory almost a year after Moscow invaded.
“An important step on the path to victory. Today the free world is united as never before for a common goal — liberation of Ukraine,” he said.
Biden “knew the only way Germany would do Leopards is if we did Abrams and allied unity is the most important thing to him. So Secretary Austin sent a proposal on how to make it happen,” one U.S. official said.
On Wednesday, Biden bristled at the notion that Germany made him approve the Abrams transfer after all.
“Germany didn’t force me to change my mind. We wanted to make sure we were all together. That’s what we were going to do all along. And that’s what we’re doing right now,” he told reporters after announcing the decision.
Moments earlier, Scholz had taken a victory lap in the Bundestag. His unmovable stance that Abrams needed to accompany Leopards on their journey to Europe’s east was heeded by the world’s most powerful nation.
“It is right that we never provide these weapons systems on our own, but always in close cooperation,” Scholz said.
The move to provide Western tanks marks a major new phase of the allies’ support of the war effort, allowing Ukraine to combine more than 100 tanks from Europe and the U.S. with armored troop carriers and artillery to shred Russia’s front lines in the east and south.
But the tank debate also signaled the first significant and open break between Kyiv’s first- and third-largest backers. In recent weeks officials from Washington and Berlin had debated whether to agree to send tanks and whether to announce the decision in tandem. The public tussle raised questions among officials inside the Western alliance about the degree to which the coalition can remain solidified in its support for Ukraine in the coming months.
This story is based on interviews with 18 officials in the U.S. and Europe, many of whom asked not to be named in order to freely discuss internal deliberations. How Biden’s team got here is a story of bureaucratic infighting and diplomatic brinkmanship, both in Washington and Berlin, and negotiations between allies that at times got heated and spilled into the public.
Cracks in the alliance
Initial American resistance to sending Abrams tanks, and German intransigence, delayed a move that, critics argued, should have happened much earlier.
In a late December visit to Washington, Zelenskyy and his team requested the U.S. send more advanced weapons to Kyiv in the coming weeks, including tanks and long-range missiles, ahead of an expected Russian offensive this spring.
In meetings at the White House, it became increasingly clear that the U.S. would not budge on the missile request. U.S. officials did not rule out sending tanks –– at some point. The question for Washington was whether it could convince other European allies to step up and supply tanks at the same time.
But cracks in the alliance began to emerge, as both the Pentagon and German leaders dug in their heels.
In public and private, senior DoD officials insisted that it may not be wise to send the Abrams at this moment. The weapons were too complex for Ukrainian forces to train on quickly — and too difficult to keep running once they started trudging through the country’s muddy winter terrain, they argued.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” said Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, after a trip to Kyiv earlier this month. “It may or may not be the right system.”
This angered senior administration officials who felt the Pentagon was scuttling a move that could help Ukraine and tighten bonds with a key ally. The comments also frustrated the Ukrainian government, which has proven time and again its troops can quickly learn new technologies decades ahead of the Soviet equipment they had been using.
“DoD initially says there’s no way we could provide X, Y, Z because of various supposed roadblocks,” a senior administration official said.
“And, lo and behold, DoD announces the provision of X, Y, and Z months later to great fanfare,” the official continued. “But their reflexive answer is no.”
Another U.S. official disputed that account and pointed to Austin, the U.S. defense chief, being responsive to the Ukrainians’ needs when it came to sending Harpoon missiles, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missiles, Bradley and Stryker vehicles, and training for all of them.
“The White House and State are generally viewing the provision of assistance one-dimensionally, focused only on the escalation dynamics,” another U.S. official said in the Pentagon’s defense. “DoD has to worry about our own military readiness, the logistics of providing equipment, sensitive tech disclosure, and training Ukrainians.”
But Kahl’s and others’ comments also frustrated defense industry executives who felt the Pentagon was making disparaging remarks about U.S.-manufactured equipment. Weeks before, Laura Cooper, a Pentagon official charged with overseeing Ukraine policy, called the Abrams a “gas guzzler.”
The U.S. does not have to advocate for sending the Abrams, one industry insider said, but administration officials shouldn’t criticize the tank. That’s especially true since another country in the region, Poland, is buying M1s from General Dynamics. Other countries such as Morocco, Iraq, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have purchased export versions of the tank.
Pressure on Berlin
Over the last few weeks, members of Biden’s national security team — Austin, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and national security adviser Jake Sullivan — met frequently with their German and European counterparts to figure out the next steps on Ukraine.
Throughout their talks, German officials felt that the Pentagon was more reluctant than the White House, but there was also a growing awareness that Berlin’s insistence on the American tank was increasingly upsetting U.S. officials, who stressed that Washington was already supplying widespread military support and that it was Berlin’s moment to step up.
Pressure within Europe continued to mount on Germany to make a move. On Jan. 11, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron and discussed how to convince Scholz to drop his resistance on tanks.
Macron suggested he and Morawiecki tag-team Scholz into submission ahead of last Friday’s meeting at Ramstein Air Base. A few days later, Morawiecki traveled to Berlin, where he met with conservative opposition leaders, but not Scholz.
Back in Warsaw on Jan. 18, Morawiecki broke a major diplomatic taboo by threatening to send Ukraine Leopards without waiting for export approval from Germany. Scholz’s chancellery was livid, but officials there knew they were running out of time.
Scholz last week told Biden on a phone call and U.S. lawmakers in Davos that no Leopards would make their way east unless Abrams accompanied them. In Scholz’s mind, the two were inextricably tethered.
Scholz has been adamant in his discussions with Biden that supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine marks such a qualitatively new step that the U.S., as the world’s biggest military power but also Germany’s guarantee for nuclear deterrence, must be involved.
They also wanted to demonstrate unity toward Putin. “It was important to the chancellor from the very beginning … that we take every step with as much unity as possible,” said Scholz’s spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit.
The allies had for the past year kept a surprisingly enduring unified front on Ukraine, contrary to the assumptions made by many before the conflict started, above Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
But the debate over the Leopard was turning toxic quickly and most of all unusually public. At Davos, the Polish President Andrzej Duda and Lithuania’s Gitanas Nauseda voiced their frustration with Germany and Scholz in private conversations. By then, Scholz was ignoring Duda’s calls to meet together and discuss the next steps on the Leopard. For his part, Scholz returned the hostility from the new eastern allies of NATO. He has been particularly angry with the right-wing Polish government’s sniping at Germany.
After Davos, the hope in Washington and European capitals was that everyone could agree on a path forward during a meeting of 50 countries at Ramstein Air Base in Germany last Friday. There, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov gathered with the defense chiefs of 12 European countries who field Leopard tanks, including Germany. But Berlin said it was still mulling it over.
The frustration prompted Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau to tweet: “Arming Ukraine in order to repel the Russian aggression is not some kind of decision-making exercise. Ukrainian blood is shed for real. This is the price of hesitation over Leopard deliveries. We need action, now.”
‘Better late than never’
With no deal with Washington in sight, the chancellor was under increasing pressure from his own coalition partners as well as European countries, especially Poland. After the failure to achieve a breakthrough, attempts to rope in the U.S. continued over the weekend, with two men — new German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who had only been appointed days before, and Scholz’s powerful right-hand man, chancellery minister Wolfgang Schmidt — playing a key role, two officials said.
Biden was constantly updated by his senior staff on the talks as he heard arguments for and against sending Abrams.
The president knew Ukraine needed Leopards — which are abundant across Europe and easier for the Ukrainians to use and maintain than the Abrams — on the battlefield as soon as possible. He started to lean toward sending the M1s after seeing bipartisan support for the transfer, and realizing the Germans would not budge.
Ultimately, Biden decided to send American tanks after Austin recommended providing 31 M1s, the size of a full Ukrainian army battalion.
The U.S. could have sent just one tank to seal the deal with Germany, but Austin decided to send a full battalion. This shows the decision was “not a symbolic gesture, but something the secretary thought was the right thing to do,” the second official said.
Hours after reports of Biden’s decision emerged, news surfaced that Scholz was ready to approve the Leopards. But not everyone in Germany’s ruling coalition was happy. Anton Hofreiter, a lawmaker from the Green party, one of the coalition partners of Scholz’s Social Democrats, said the chancellor lost time by insisting on the U.S. linkage and antagonized close allies.
“It would have been better for Germany’s international reputation to decide more quickly. In particular, many countries in Europe were annoyed to make the delivery dependent on the United States,” Hofreiter said.
“But better late than never,” he added.
Even now the U.S. administration — which never ruled out sending the Abrams — is warning that it will be months before Ukraine will be able to use the tanks on the battlefield. But officials said the decision was made to begin buying the tanks now so that when they arrive on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces will be able to maintain and operate them.
DoD is now working through the logistical challenges of delivering the Abrams and supporting them on the battlefield, said a senior administration official. The military will be setting up a “very careful” training program to teach the Ukrainians how to maintain, sustain and operate the weapons, “which do require a good deal of assistance,” the official said.
At the same time, DoD is training Ukrainians on combined arms maneuver tactics, which will allow Ukrainian forces to integrate the Abrams and other armored capabilities into their overall operations.
In a Wednesday morning call with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, Austin didn’t give a timeline for when the first Abrams might arrive. The priority for now, he added, should be on training the Ukrainians on Leopard tanks, along with U.S.-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and new mobile howitzers and other heavy armor recently announced by Western partners.
In an interview, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was far more optimistic about the timeframe.
“We are aware of the fact that training soldiers to operate Abrams tanks takes months. But we are also convinced that the United States have decided to provide Ukrainians with the insight, rapid training program for tank cooperation,” he said. “And this may mean that jointly with the highly motivated Ukrainian fighters, this training might take weeks rather than months.”
Now that the dustup appears to have been settled for now, not everyone is ecstatic at how the whole process played out.
“Germany is still very afraid of Russia. That is the reality,” said Oleksii Goncharenko, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament. “They are still playing these games about defensive weapons versus offensive weapons. It is nonsense because the war is a defensive war for us.”
A senior Polish official said Scholz’s delay was looked at “with embarrassment.” The chancellor “bears full political and moral responsibility for his decisions, and he will be accountable for his decision to voters and history.”
Biden allies are happy, however, with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) telling POLITICO he was “encouraged” by all that developed over the last 24 hours. “It’s a positive announcement from our friends and partners in Germany.”
Erin Banco, Nahal Toosi, Lili Bayer and Lee Hudson contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“You see multiple countries across the broad coalition we’ve built stepping up to send a strong message of support to our long-term commitment to Ukraine,” said a senior administration official, who asked for anonymity to speak ahead of Biden’s announcement.
The news comes after weeks of discussions between U.S. and European leaders, particularly the Germans, who have long resisted sending their own Leopard 2 tanks. Biden has spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz multiple times this month about providing assistance to Ukraine, and the two nations announced last month that they would send Patriot missile systems to help defend Ukrainian cities, said the senior administration official.
Top members of Biden’s national security team — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and national security adviser Jake Sullivan — also met frequently with their German and European counterparts, including most recently at a meeting of defense ministers at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, last week.
Top U.S. officials urged Germany to send their Leopard 2s, which are abundant across Europe and easier for the Ukrainians to use and maintain than the Abrams. But Berlin stood firm, with senior German leaders privately telling Washington that they would only send Leopards if the U.S. sent Abrams.
The president knew Ukraine needed Leopards on the battlefield as soon as possible, so he worked with his national security team to approve the Abrams. He ultimately decided to send American tanks after Austin’s recommendation, according to two other U.S. officials.
Biden “knew the only way Germany would do Leopards is if we did Abrams and allied unity is the most important thing to him. So Secretary Austin sent a proposal on how to make it happen,” one of the officials said.
The U.S. could have sent just one tank to seal the deal with Germany, but Austin decided to send a full battalion, said the second U.S. official. This shows the decision was “not a symbolic gesture, but something the secretary thought was the right thing to do.”
As news of Biden’s decision emerged in media reports Tuesday, including POLITICO, the government in Berlin announced on Wednesday that Germany and its European partners planned to “quickly” send two Leopard 2 tank battalions to Kyiv. Poland, Spain, Norway and Finland are also likely to join in the coalition of nations sending Leopards.
The decision comes after Pentagon leaders argued publicly and privately that now may not be the right time to send the Abrams. The tanks are too complicated for Ukrainian forces to learn to operate quickly and maintain on the battlefield, they argued.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” said Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, after a trip to Kyiv. “It may or may not be the right system.”
The administration’s thinking on the challenges the Abrams presents hasn’t changed. But the decision was made to procure them now so that when they arrive on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces will be able to maintain and operate them.
The tanks won’t be drawn from DoD’s stocks, as has been the case for other military aid. Rather, DoD will procure the weapons with money provided through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This means it will be months before Ukraine actually gets them.
“There are technical aspects to the Abrams, which makes it a little bit more challenging than some systems that we have provided,” said a second senior administration official. “There’s supply chain issues that have to be dealt with, certainly training and maintenance issues that has to be dealt with.
“That’s why we’re doing it this way, through USAI, so that we can take the time, not too much, but take enough time to make sure that when they get into the field that the Ukrainians can use them and maintain them and keep them in the fight effectively offensively on our own.”
Another reason to procure the Abrams through contracts rather then sending them directly from DoD stocks is because the Pentagon does not have sufficient tanks in its inventory to transfer them to Ukraine, said a third senior administration official.
“As with other capabilities, you’ve seen us do this before if we do not have readily within U.S. stocks, then we go the procurement route to make sure that we can procure the right capability for Ukraine,” the person said. “That is what we’re doing here with the Abrams.”
The M1s will build on the capabilities the Pentagon has provided in previous aid packages, including hundreds of armored vehicles, air defenses and artillery shells, officials said.
DoD is now working through the challenges of delivering the Abrams and supporting them on the battlefield. The military will be setting up a “very careful” training program to teach the Ukrainians how to maintain, sustain and operate the weapons, “which do require a good deal of assistance,” the official said.
In addition to the tanks themselves, DoD is also procuring eight M88 recovery vehicles, which are designed to repair or replace damaged Abrams parts during a fight, as well as extricate vehicles that become bogged down. These vehicles “go with the Abrams to be able to provide coverage of your operation, to make sure Ukrainians will be able to keep these Abrams up and running,” the official said.
At the same time, DoD is training Ukrainians on combined arms maneuver tactics, which will allow Ukrainian forces to integrate the Abrams and other armored capabilities into their overall operations.
All of these weapons are aimed at helping Ukraine continue fighting Russia over the coming weeks and months, particularly in the wide-open terrain of the northeastern Donbas region, said the third senior administration official. The Abrams, in particular, is reflective of the administration’s long-term commitment to the war.
“We’ve said all along, the capabilities we’re going to provide are going to evolve with the needs of the war. And I think that’s what you’re seeing here,” said the second senior administration official.
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BERLIN — Finally Germany has agreed to allow its state-of-the-art Leopard 2 tanks to be donated to Ukraine, in a marked shift from its leaders’ reluctance to significantly increase military support to help the country fight Russia.
The announcement by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, coupled with an anticipated decision by the US to send about 30 M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. After Pressure has been building for weeks on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government to send the tanks and allow NATO allies to do the same before expected spring offensives by both sides.
Im Kabinett hat der @Bundeskanzler heute weitere Unterstützung an die #Ukraine mit der Lieferung von #Leopard 2 Panzern angekündigt. Auch Partnerländern wird eine entsprechende Genehmigung erteilt. Das ist eng mit den internationalen Partnern abgestimmt. https://t.co/e31Kf3V1oi
Scholz told his Cabinet of his decision that Germany will further strengthen its military support for Ukraine, German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said. “The Federal Government has decided to make Leopard 2 battle tanks available to the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stands next to a Leopard 2 main battle tank of the German armed forces while visiting an army training center in Ostenholz, Germany, on Oct. 17, 2022. David Hecker/Getty Image
Germany’s decision paves the way for other countries such as Poland, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway to supply some of their Leopard tanks to Ukraine, going some way towards delivering the hundreds of tanks that Ukraine says it needs.
The Kremlin warned on Wednesday that if Western countries supply Ukraine with heavy tanks they will be destroyed on the battlefield.
“These tanks burn like all the rest. They are just very expensive,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The Kremlin’s warning came as a Moscow-backed official said Russian forces had advanced in Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine that Russia has been trying to capture for months.
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The transfer of U.S. and German tanks would mark a major development in the West’s effort to arm Ukraine. Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have spent weeks pleading for tanks as Kyiv prepares for fresh Russian offensives in the country’s east.
One of the two U.S. officials said the Biden administration is considering sending around 30 Abrams tanks.
The vehicles would likely come through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, according to a third person familiar with the issue. The program allows Washington to finance the purchase of weapons and equipment for Ukraine, as opposed to pulling them from existing U.S. stockpiles.
The Pentagon never took tanks off the table, stressed a fourth U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of an announcement. But in recent weeks U.S. officials have publicly cited the difficulties of providing the M1s, the Army’s main battle tank. They have said the Abrams made little operational sense for Ukraine at this moment because they guzzle jet fuel and require long supply lines to maintain.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, told reporters last week after a trip to Kyiv. “It may or may not be the right system.”
The developments come after weeks of tense discussions between Washington, Berlin and their European allies. Since Scholz met with U.S. lawmakers last week, the German government has shifted its stance, at one point denying it had linked the transfers of the Abrams and Leopards.
A parade of Democrats and Republicans has pressured the Biden administration to grant Berlin’s request to send U.S. tanks first.
“If the Germans continue to say we will only send or release Leopards on the condition that Americans send Abrams, we should send Abrams,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, told POLITICO moments before Sky News Arabia first broke news of the decision on Tuesday.
The M1 Abrams tanks currently in the U.S. Army’s motor pools would first need to be stripped of sensitive communications and other equipment before being sent to Ukraine, making it an expensive and time-consuming process.
A handful of countries operate less modern versions of the Abrams, including Australia, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco, while Poland has 250 on order slated to begin arriving in 2024.
Egypt by far has the most Abrams tanks in service, with over 1,000 older M1A1 models as the result of a decades-long co-production deal with the United States.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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When a major corruption scandal broke in Ukraine last weekend, reporters faced an excruciating dilemma between professional duty and patriotism. The first thought that came to my mind was: “Should I write about this for foreigners? Will it make them stop supporting us?”
There was no doubting the severity of the cases that were erupting into the public sphere. They cut to the heart of the war economy. In one instance, investigators were examining whether the deputy infrastructure minister had profited from a deal to supply electrical generators at an inflated price, while the defense ministry was being probed over an overpriced contract to supply food and catering services to the troops.
Huge stories, but in a sign of our life-or-death times in Ukraine, even my colleague Yuriy Nikolov, who got the scoop on the inflated military contract, admitted he had done everything he could not to publish his investigation. He took his findings to public officials hoping that they might be able to resolve the matter, before he finally felt compelled to run it on the ZN.UA website.
Getting a scoop that shocks your country, forces your government to start investigations and reform military procurement, and triggers the resignation of top officials is ordinarily something that makes other journalists jealous. But I fully understand how Nikolov feels about wanting to hold back when your nation is at war. Russia (and Ukraine’s other critics abroad) are, after all, looking to leap upon any opportunity to undermine trust in our authorities.
A journalist is meant to stay a little distant from the situation he or she covers. It helps to stay impartial and to stick to the facts, not emotions. But what if staying impartial is impossible as you have to cover the invasion of your own country? Naturally, you have to keep holding your government to account, but you are also painfully aware that the enemy is out there looking to exploit any opportunity to erode faith in the leadership and undermine national security.
That is exactly what Ukrainian journalists have to deal with every day. In the first six months of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and watchdogs decided to put their public criticism of the Ukrainian government on pause and focus on documenting Russian war crimes.
But that has backfired.
“This pause led to a rapid loss of accountability for many Ukrainian officials,” Mykhailo Tkach, one of Ukraine’s top investigative journalists, wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda.
His investigations about Ukrainian officials leaving the country during the war for lavish vacations in Europe led to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues. It also sparked the dismissal of the powerful deputy prosecutor general.
The Ukrainian government was forced to react to corruption and make a major reshuffle almost immediately. Would that happen if Ukrainian journalists decided to sit on their findings until victory? I doubt it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended up imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Is it still painful when you have to write about your own government’s officials’ flops when overwhelming enemy forces are trying to erase your nation from the planet, using every opportunity they can get to shake your international partners’ faith? Of course it is.
But in this case, there was definite room for optimism. Things are changing in Ukraine. The government had to react very quickly, under intense pressure from civil society and the independent press. Memes and social media posts immediately appeared, mocking the government’s pledge to buy eggs at massively inflated prices. Ultimately, the deputy infrastructure minister was fired and the deputy defense minister resigned.
This speedy response was praised by the European Commission and showed how far we really are from Russia, where authorities hunt down not the officials accused of corruption, but the journalists who report it.
As Tkach said, many believe that the war with the internal enemy will begin immediately after the victory over the external one.
However, we can’t really wait that long. It is important to understand that the sooner we win the battle with the internal enemy — high-profile corruption — the sooner we win the war against Russia.
“Destruction of corruption means getting additional funds for the defense capability of the country. And it means more military and civilian lives saved,” Tkach said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
It appears it’s only a matter of time before the Kremlin orders another draft to replenish its depleted ranks and make up for the battlefield failings of its command.
This week, Norway’s army chief said Russia has already suffered staggering losses, estimating 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since February — a figure much higher than American estimates, as General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, had suggested in November that the toll was around 100,000.
But whatever the exact tally, few military analysts doubt Russian forces are suffering catastrophic casualties. In a video posted this week, Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova, who heads the Russia Behind Bars charity, said that of the 50,000 conscripts recruited from jails by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s paramilitary mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, 40,000 are now dead, missing or deserted.
In some ways, the high Wagner toll isn’t surprising, with increasing reports from both sides of the front lines that Prigozhin has been using his recruits with little regard for their longevity. One American volunteer, who asked to remain unnamed, recently told POLITICO that he was amazed how Wagner commanders were just hurling their men at Ukrainian positions, only to have them gunned down for little gain.
Andrey Medvedev, a Wagner defector who recently fled to Norway, has also told reporters that in the months-long Russian offensive against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, former prisoners were thrown into battle as cannon fodder, as meat. “In my platoon, only three out of 30 men survived. We were then given more prisoners, and many of those died too,” he said.
Of course, Wagner is at the extreme end when it comes to carelessness with lives — but as Ukraine’s deadly New Year’s Day missile strike demonstrated, regular Russian armed forces are also knee-deep in blood. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed at Makiivka — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the invasion began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll was nearer 400.
Many of those killed there came from Samara, a city located at the confluence of the Volga and Samara rivers, where Communist dictator Joseph Stalin had an underground complex built for Russian leaders in case of a possible evacuation from Moscow. The bunker was built in just as much secrecy as the funerals that have been taking place over the past few weeks for the conscripts killed at Makiivka. “Lists [of the dead] will not be published,” Samara’s military commissar announced earlier this month.
To make up for these losses, Russia’s military bloggers, who have grown increasingly critical, have been urging a bigger partial mobilization, this time of 500,000 reservists to add to the 300,000 already called up in September. President Vladimir Putin has denied this, and Kremlin press spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also dismissed the possibility, saying that the “topic is constantly artificially activated both from abroad and from within the country.”
Yet, last month, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called for Russia’s army to be boosted from its current 1.1 million to 1.5 million, and he announced new commands in regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia, on the border with Finland.
Meanwhile, circumstantial evidence that another draft will be called is also accumulating — though whether it will be done openly or by stealth is unclear.
Along these lines, both the Kremlin and Russia’s political-military establishment have been redoubling propaganda efforts, attempting to shape a narrative that this war isn’t one of choice but of necessity, and that it amounts to an existential clash for the country.
General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” | Ruslan Braun/Creative commons via Flickr
In a recent interview, General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” and that course corrections are needed when it comes to mobilization. He talked about threats arising from Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Similarly, in his Epiphany address this month, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said, “the desire to defeat Russia today has taken very dangerous forms. We pray to the Lord that he will bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.” And the increasingly unhinged Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the war in Ukraine isn’t going as planned, so it might be necessary to use nuclear weapons to avoid failure.
As Russia’s leaders strive to sell their war as an existential crisis, they are mining ever deeper for tropes to heighten nationalist fervor too, citing the Great Patriotic War at every turn. At the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, which commemorates the breaking of the German siege of the city in 1944, a new exhibition dedicated to “The Lessons of Fascism Yet to Be Learned” is due to be unveiled, and it is set to feature captured Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles. “It’s only logical that a museum dedicated to the struggle against Nazism would support the special operation directed against neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” a press release helpfully suggests.
In line with Putin’s insistence that the war is being waged to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists have also been endeavoring to popularize the slogan, “We can do it again.”
At the same time, there are signs that local recruitment centers are gearing up for another surge of draftees as well.
Rumors of a fresh partial mobilization have prompted some dual-citizen Central Asian workers — those holding Russian passports and who would be eligible to be drafted — to leave the country, and some say they’ve been prevented from exiting. A Kyrgyz man told Radio Free Europe he was stopped by Russian border guards when he tried to cross into Kazakhstan en route to Kyrgyzstan. “Russian border guards explained to me quite politely that ‘you are included in a mobilization list, this is the law, and you have no right to go,’” he said.
In order to prevent another surge of refuseniks, Moscow also seems determined to put up further restrictions on crossing Russia’s borders, including possibly making it obligatory for Russians to book a specific time and place in advance, so that they can exit. Amendments to a transport law introduced in the Duma on Monday would require “vehicles belonging to Russian transport companies, foreign transport companies, citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, stateless persons and other road users” to reserve a date and time “in order to cross the state border of the Russian Federation.”
Transport officials say this would only affect haulers and would help ease congestion near border checkpoints. But if so, then why are “citizens of the Russian Federation” included in the language?
All in all, manpower will be crucial for Russia to mount a spring offensive in the coming months. And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers on the battlefield. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest are necessary for an attacking force.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
