The growing confidence in the western capital that it is sending modern battle tanks to Ukraine marks an important change in the mindset of Kyiv’s allies.
“It means that [Ukraine] can move from refusing to expel Russian troops from the soil of Ukraine,” Britain’s defense secretary Ben Wallace said this week as he confirmed that Britain will send a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks and dozens of self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine.
With NATO defense ministers set to meet on Friday to coordinate a new weapons package, western capitals know that Ukraine has only a narrow window to act – if Kyiv will launch a successful counterattack before Russia reinforces and reinforces it. troops run out.
“This is an inflection point because Russia is taking steps that clearly show they don’t think the war is lost,” said David Petraeus, a former CIA director and retired four-star general who led US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Analysts and officials warn that this changing western calculus does not mean an end to the current trickle of arms supplies to Kyiv – in part because some western capitals fear it could trigger a Russian military escalation.
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A key moment will come at the US Ramstein airbase in Germany on Friday, where the UK, Poland and Finland will try to persuade a reluctant Berlin to supply Kyiv with Leopard 2 tanks and, crucially, allow other governments. The US is not expected to commit to sending American-made Abrams tanks.
Berlin has so far resisted, fearing the move could escalate the war and enrage Germany against Moscow. German officials are confident they will not move forward with tanks unless the US joins the initiative.
Behind the scenes, the US supported Germany in sending tanks but did not pressure Berlin to do so, officials said.
“We are not coaxing or trying to deceive any country’s decision about what they want to provide,” an administration official. “We respect this as a sovereign decision and thank you for all the weapons that Germany has provided.”
Consensus is growing among Kyiv supporters that Ukraine needs more offensive firepower to break the stalemate in the war before Moscow musters more troops to the front lines.
Ukraine needs a “significant increase in support”, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, saying the war had reached a “crucial moment”.
“Ukraine’s armed forces have available reserves and western aid,” said Jack Watling, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Russian forces are now at their nadir. But Russia has mobilized 300,000 troops. By the end of 2023, Russian military industrial production may begin to increase. So there is a military and political imperative to act now.
Donating a western tank can provide a variety of benefits. This would make Ukraine less dependent on Soviet-era tanks, for which supplies of ammunition and spare parts are limited.
Providing enough artillery ammunition for Kyiv is a real challenge, western officials say, so if Kyiv has more armor for offensive operations, it will not need to rely on artillery bombardment to penetrate Russian positions.
Wallace said another goal of deploying tanks and howitzers independently is for Kyiv to achieve a “combined arms effect” — an operation that combines armor, artillery and infantry. The US this week began joint-arms training for Ukrainian forces in Germany.
Washington has promised to send scores of Bradley infantry fighting vehicles to Kyiv and finalize plans to supply 100 Stryker combat vehicles, both of which are essential for mobile warfare. However, until now they have refused to provide Abrams tanks, arguing that they are harder for the Ukrainian forces to fuel and maintain than the German-built Leopards.
Asked if the US would send Abrams to Ukraine, Colin Kahl, the US defense secretary for policy, said: “I don’t think we are there yet,” citing maintenance and logistical challenges. But he said Berlin should not feel it in itself if it sends Leopards, pointing to the British decision to send Challenger tanks.
“I think if there is concern about providing this capability, it shouldn’t be a concern, but the German government will make a sovereign decision,” he said.
Kyiv’s partners once considered sending tanks a taboo, as there was a risk that Russia would consider the move a casus belli with the west.
Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the think-tank European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said that “the Rubicon was crossed long ago by sending artillery, armored artillery and Himars. [precision-guided rockets]”. Putin’s “red line” on western military support for Kyiv has been “removed”.
Washington has backed a proposal to send European tanks to Ukraine. Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said last week that Britain and Germany could send tanks without US participation. “We are supporting any type of ability that will give Ukrainians an advantage in the battlefield,” he said.
But some European officials suspect that Washington’s refusal to send a token contingent of Abrams — thereby giving German Chancellor Olaf Scholz political cover to provide the Leopards — reflects U.S. concerns about the risk of escalation.
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Washington has rejected Ukrainian requests for longer-range precision missiles, such as in the ATACM with a range of 300km, or modern fighter jets, such as the F-16, fearing that they could be used to attack Russian territory, as they once did for tanks. .
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that the supply of weapons from the west that could attack Russia and Russian-controlled territories such as Crimea would “take the conflict to a new level”, according to Interfax. “Even discussing this is very dangerous,” he said.
Another problem is that training Ukrainian forces to use modern western tanks can take several months.
In addition, some western officials and analysts question how much progress Ukraine will make, despite being reinforced with more armor. Although Ukrainian forces overcame flimsy Russian defenses to recapture Kharkiv province in the fall, they sought to liberate Kherson.
“His strategy is to bleed Russia,” said a European security official, “but also bleed Ukrainians.”