A Leopard 2A6 tank crosses a puddle during a military exercise in Munster, Germany / AP File
The Western decision to send main battle tanks to the Ukraine was greeted with enthusiasm from Washington to Berlin via kyiv. At first, Moscow played it down, only to launch a new barrage of attacks.
The Kremlin had already warned that such tank deliveries would be a dangerous escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. He strongly denounced the decisive step by Germany and the US to send heavy weapons to their enemy, but insisted that the new equipment will not prevent Russia from achieving its objectives in Ukraine.
“The potential it gives the Ukrainian armed forces is clearly exaggerated,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Those tanks will burn like any other.”
Moscow downplayed the decision right after the announcement, in an apparent attempt to save face as the West doubled down on Ukraine. Some Russia experts also stressed that supplies of the lethal armor will be relatively limited and could take months to reach the front.
Russia launched a new barrage of missiles and explosive drones in Ukraine yesterday, the latest in a series of attacks, many of which targeted power plants and other key infrastructure.
Russian military bloggers and commentators asserted that such attacks involve meticulous preparation, so the latest barrage was likely planned in advance and not necessarily related to the announcement of the new main battle tanks.
Yohann Michel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) research institute stressed that while Western arms supplies irritate Russia, Russia can do nothing to stop them. “It’s a problem they can’t necessarily tackle,” he said, noting that earlier decisions by the US and its allies to supply Ukraine with air defense weapons might have been even more alarming for Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin, his diplomats and military leaders have repeatedly warned the West that supplying long-range weapons capable of striking deep into Russia would be overreaching and would trigger a massive retaliation.
While other weapons such as tanks and certain air defense systems have prompted warnings from Russian authorities, the words chosen have been deliberately vague, perhaps to allow the Kremlin to avoid being cornered for making specific threats.
Poland, the Czech Republic and other NATO countries have already given Ukraine hundreds of smaller Soviet-made tanks, when they were part of the Soviet bloc in the Cold War. The Ukrainian armed forces, which have used similar ancient weaponry, did not need additional training to use them. They played an important role on the battlefield, helping Ukraine recapture vast swaths of territory in 11 months of fighting.
As Ukrainian armor wears out and stocks of aging T-72 tanks dwindle in the arsenals of its allies in Central and Eastern Europe, kyiv has pushed harder for German-made Leopard 2 tanks and M1 Abrams tanks. American, which has finally been given.
In addition, the Ukrainian government is hoping to receive F-16 fighter jets and long-range rockets from the US for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, to strike specific targets behind the lines. from the front.
