US expected to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine

On Tuesday, officials said that despite resistance from the Pentagon and other sources, the Biden administration plans to announce a decision to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

The tanks, long sought after by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, will be the heaviest weapons among the billions of dollars of military aid Washington has sent to Ukraine to help repel a brutal Russian invasion.

But given the sophistication, complexity and firepower of the tanks, it could be months or even more than a year before they reach the battlefield and Ukrainian fighters are trained to use these vehicles.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gene. Pat Ryder, responding to objections from Defense Department officials, said the Abrams tank was an important weapon, but not as easy to operate.

The tank “is a very powerful combat platform,” he said on Tuesday, adding that “it’s also a very complex capability.”

“And so, like everything we provide to Ukraine, we want to make sure they have the ability to support it, support it, train on it.”

He stressed that he did not announce the decision to put the tanks “at the present time”, the official position is repeated in the White House and the State Department.

As recently as last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Colin Kahl said the Pentagon was not ready to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, saying that in addition to maneuvering difficulties, the vehicles are equipped with gas-guzzling jet engines that are expensive to fuel.

He told reporters that Pentagon leadership “was very focused on … not giving Ukrainians systems that they can’t repair, that they can’t maintain, and that they can’t afford in the long run because it’s not useful.” “

But US officials are also keen to send a political signal to Germany, which is reluctant to supply its Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine unless the US also offers tanks.

Germany may soften its position, born of decades of official pacifist stance after World War II. And Poland, for example, has Leopard tanks, which it would like to supply to Ukraine, but requested permission from Germany for this.

However, in recent days Poland has offered to send tanks with or without German permission. German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock said on Sunday her country would no longer object.

The Leopard pales in comparison to the Abrams, US officials say, but it would be easier at first to operate in Europe, where it has years of experience.

Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken, whose aides say he has been actively involved in finding ways to support Ukraine, met with representatives of the world’s G7 of the world’s most advanced economies on Tuesday morning to discuss Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s electricity, heating, and water supply networks. and other energy sources.

They did not publicly mention tanks or other weapons, and State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to confirm the decision on the Abrams.

“Needless to say, this is an ongoing conversation and it is a conversation that allows us to respond to the needs of our Ukrainian partners,” Price said at a briefing with reporters when asked if a decision had been made.

He said the amount of military aid provided by the US and Europe since Russia’s invasion nearly a year ago was “staggering.” The Pentagon and other defense operations have gradually increased the number of weapons being sent, from shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missiles to, more recently, the sophisticated Patriot air defense system.

But tanks were a new line to be crossed, and some U.S. officials were concerned about the sight—if the Ukrainians were ill-prepared—of destroyed and disabled Abrams, maimed on the battlefield and dragged off by the Russians. And other officials accurately predicted that Moscow would be furious at what it would call another “escalation” from the West.

However, they also faced increasingly dire conditions in Ukraine, where Russian troops shelled housing estates and civilian infrastructure as winter frosts rolled in.

In another case in Ukraine on Tuesday, at least nine senior government officials, including a deputy defense minister, were fired or forced to resign as part of a corruption scandal. Zelensky was elected in a landslide in 2019 on promises to root out the rampant corruption that has long plagued Ukraine.

Some of the allegations involve mishandling of wartime supplies, Ukrainian officials said, but US officials said they were not yet aware of specific abuses involving US materials.

Corruption has sometimes played a curious role in Ukrainian history. When he was vice president, Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor accused by the European Union of failing to investigate corruption cases. Later, then-President Trump and his associates accused the Zelensky government of widespread corruption when it refused to help him unearth compromising evidence on the Biden family.

Currently, some Republican members of Congress, along with several Democrats, are demanding greater accountability and transparency in US aid to Ukraine. The Pentagon insists that checks and controls are already in place.