- Re: The problem is there's a paywall (nm) Archived Message
Posted by Raskolnikov
on January 24, 2023, 8:45 pm, in reply to "The problem is there's a paywall (nm)"
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I'm not getting any paywall and don't have a hack around enabled. Here's the text anyway. WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is leaning toward sending a significant number of Abrams M1 tanks to Ukraine and an announcement of the deliveries could come this week, U.S. officials said. The announcement would be part of a broader diplomatic understanding with Germany in which Berlin would agree to send a smaller number of its own Leopard 2 tanks and would also approve the delivery of more of the German-made tanks by Poland and other nations. It would settle a trans-Atlantic disagreement over the tanks that had threatened to open fissures as the war drags into the end of its first year. The White House declined to comment. The deal would address a rift between the U.S. and the Germans and other Europeans over providing tanks for Ukraine during a pivotal phase of the war. Kyiv is preparing a counteroffensive to try to take back Ukrainian territory and Russia is mobilizing troops for its own operations. The shift in the U.S. position follows a call on Jan. 17 between President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in which Mr. Biden agreed to look into providing the Abrams tanks against the judgment of the Pentagon. A senior German official said that the issue had been the subject of intense negotiation between Washington and Berlin for more than a week and appeared to be on the way to resolution. Germany’s government will pledge to provide around 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv from its stocks and approve third-party requests from countries such as Poland to donate German-made tanks to Ukraine as soon as the agreement with the U.S. is announced, which is expected to happen imminently, the official said. In a contentious meeting last week at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the U.S. and its allies failed to persuade Germany to allow other nations to send German-made tanks, exposing the first serious rift in the alliance that has supported Kyiv. German officials had initially said that they wouldn’t be the first to send tanks to Ukraine and wouldn’t do so unless the U.S. provided its own Abrams tanks. Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told German television last week that German and U.S. tanks don’t need to be provided at the same time and indicated that his government was still weighing what to do. Poland’s defense minister said Tuesday that Poland had asked Germany for permission to send some of its German-made tanks to Ukraine. “The Germans have already received our request for consent to transfer Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine,” Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said. “I also appeal to the German side to join the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks.” Publicly, U.S. officials have praised Germany for weapons contributions it has made to Ukraine, including the IRIS-T air defense system and the promise to send a Patriot antimissile battery to supplement the ones pledged by the U.S. and the Netherlands, as well as Marder infantry-fighting vehicles. Privately, U.S. officials were frustrated by Germany’s refusal to approve the provision of German-made tanks and have debated how to persuade Berlin to change its stance. Pentagon officials want Leopard tanks for Ukraine, but didn’t want to send the Abrams there now, arguing that the gas-guzzling tanks with their gas turbine engines, fuel requirements and substantial amount of training and logistics necessities make them less-than-desirable for this moment in the nearly yearlong conflict. Some State Department and White House officials, however, have been open to meeting the German demands on the Abrams to avoid a deepening rift among Ukraine’s backers over aid to Ukraine and to expedite the delivery of more armor. The British promised earlier this month to send 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, but that wasn’t enough to persuade the Germans to release their hold on the Leopards. Previously, the Pentagon had ruled out providing the tanks to Ukraine, saying they were too complicated for the Ukrainians to maintain and operate. But White House and State Department officials were described as being more open to providing Abrams to break the diplomatic logjam holding up Leopard deliveries. Some Democratic lawmakers close to the White House, such as Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, have also urged that some Abrams be provided. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe have been in near lockstep over the provision of military aid such as heavy artillery, missile launchers, aerial defenses and infantry fighting vehicles. Ukraine has already retaken territory from Russia, but tanks provided by the West would help Kyiv move soldiers faster across the battlefield, backed up by other weapons Ukraine is due to receive from Western partners following the meeting at Ramstein Air Base. Mr. Pistorius, who was sworn into office as German defense minister last week, has said several times that the ultimate decision about sending German tanks to Ukraine lies with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Under German law, the Economy Ministry is responsible for such requests, which need to be coordinated with the Defense Ministry and ultimately be approved by the Chancellery. Economy Minister Robert Habeck, whose Green Party rules in a coalition with Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, has come out in favor of sending German-made tanks to Ukraine, as has the Green foreign minister. Mr. Habeck would make sure the request is expedited, said officials familiar with his thinking. U.S. and other NATO officials have suggested that the Leopard tank is most appropriate for Ukraine because of its availability in several countries and the possibility of quickly building supply and maintenance chains. But German officials said that Mr. Scholz was concerned about ending up with a fleet of almost exclusively German-made tanks in Ukraine, a scenario that could single his country out as a party to the conflict. Germany doesn’t have an independent nuclear deterrent and is therefore determined to act in concert with allies, notably the U.S., these officials said. “We absolutely want to have German tanks in Ukraine but they need to be part of a broad coalition that would provide a mix of hardware, including the Abrams,” one official said. German officials expressed frustration with the negative publicity that the tank debate has generated for their government, both at home and abroad, noting that the country is now a leading provider of military and financial aid to Ukraine and has welcomed the second-largest community of Ukrainian refugees in the West. Ukrainian officials said it would be a matter of time before the country receives Western tanks. “The question of time is a question of life for us,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. In Moscow, chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who led the initial invasion and was recently named commander of the Kremlin’s troops in Ukraine, said Russia was facing the entire “collective West” in the war and hadn’t faced such intensive fighting in its modern history. In his first interview since the invasion, Gen. Gerasimov told government newspaper Argumenty i Fakty that Russia was forced to mobilize 300,000 reservists last year because of the West’s support for Ukraine. He said the draft, which exposed many of the problems plaguing the Russian military including inadequate training and equipment, had faced snags but that the army had since addressed them. Though President Vladimir Putin has said he doesn’t see a need for another mobilization, Russians are girding for a new round. After Russia suffered a string of losses in the early fall, the draft stabilized the front lines and has since appeared to tilt the calculus of attrition in Moscow’s favor, as Russia claimed a series of gains in Ukraine’s east and south this month. |