It took time, threats and a lot of humiliation but in the 48th week of the war Germany joined its allies in pledging its most expensive main battle tank to Ukraine to fight the Russians.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday announced that Berlin will send a company – about 14 – of Leopards to Kyiv, allowing other member states to do the same.
The tanks are designed to help Ukraine raise a new threat, or to prevent further Russian aggression – whichever comes first.
“Spring is the beginning of summer [March-August in Europe] he will be determined in battle. If the big attack on Russia that was planned this time fails, then Russia and Putin will fall,” said Ukraine’s deputy chief of intelligence Major-General Vadym Skibitskyi.
Although the number of tanks was less than what Ukraine had requested, Germany agreed after days of pressure from allies who signaled Berlin’s isolation on the issue.
European governments have generally been careful not to escalate the conflict by providing weapons unless absolutely necessary.
On January 14, the United Kingdom violated the heavy weapons law, saying it would send a company of its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged other organizations to send aid. The pressure on the tanks fell on Germany because the Leopard was the most mass-produced main battle tank in Europe, with 2,000 deployed in 13 countries.
But Germany refused to send its tanks, or to give others permission to send theirs back – a legal requirement.
“Germany does not want to be known as the country that sent the most dangerous weapons to fight against the Russians. This could be a case of a second German attack on Russia,” said George Pagoulatos, director of the Hellenic Foundation of European and Foreign Policy, a think tank. thought in Athens, about the Nazi invasion of Russia during the Second World War.
In part, however, it was the German chancellor’s style that was at fault, said Minna Alander, research fellow at the Finnish Institute on International Relations.
“There seems to be a problem where Scholz only listens to his group of long-term advisers, and in their echo chamber, it seems that they have decided that this is the right way – to be level-headed, rational, not allowing yourself to be pushed into anything,” Alander told Al Jazeera. .
Germany confirms it will supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 battle tanks and accepts requests from other countries to do the same.
Updates 🟠 LIVE: https://t.co/f8ew4EPuU8 pic.twitter.com/UeetSYxMrQ
– Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 25, 2023
Excuses, excuses
Some of Germany’s arguments were seen as disappointing. At a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine in the German city of Ramstein last week, where 50 countries gathered to provide military assistance, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told disbelieving allies that he had only ordered a count of Leopard stocks to check their presence.
Business Insider reported that her predecessor, Christine Lambrecht, had blocked such a review, fearing that the mere existence of the document would force chancellor Scholz to take action.
But Spiegel’s report revealed that the inventory of Leopards in the Bundeswehr was taken during 2022, showing that at least 19 tanks were found in Ukraine.
Additionally, German defense major Rheinmetall said it could deliver 88 older Leopard 1 tanks in April 2022, a month after Ukraine requested them, and this week Rheinmetall said it could also deliver 29 new Leopard 2A4 tanks by April.
Ukraine started the war with about 900 main battle tanks, according to the RUSI report, but it has suffered and now needs hundreds, in many places, to replace them.
In an interview with the Economist in December, Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said he needed 300 tanks, 600-700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 howitzers to help his army repel Russian forces.
The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, told the Ukrainian parliament that he supported the acquisition of long-range missiles and tanks from the West.
“You need more. Additional air defense systems, long-range missiles and shells and, above all, you need tanks. For now,” said Michel.
Germany’s crisis interferes with the war in Ukraine
Germany has been destroyed by the war, said Pagoulatos.
“Germany’s industrial competitiveness, based on cheap energy from Russia and good economic relations with Russia, … has suffered a serious blow,” he told Al Jazeera.
But the country has also lost its political leadership role in northeastern Europe, which the EU encouraged and whose economy contributed to development, Pagoulatos said.
“This is self-destructive for Germany because it can do what the Europeans are asking…
After Ramstein, the foreign ministers of the three Baltic states asked Germany to send tanks to Ukraine – a sign of Germany’s decline in Europe.
Polish Foreign Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he could ignore German re-export licenses and send tanks to Ukraine.
“Compromise is very important here, we will get this permission quickly or we will do the necessary things ourselves,” he said.
A week earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda said he wanted to form an alliance of those who wanted to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine – usurping Germany’s position.
The audience saw the future goals at work. German policymakers “prioritised long-term relations with Russia”, wrote Oxford University historian Timothy Garton Ash.
Another St Andrews professor, Phillips O’Brien, called it “a pathetic desire to remain on behalf of post-war Russia”.
Germany may have stuck to its guns at Ramstein, but its resistance came at the weekend, when the Green Party, its junior partner in the ruling coalition, broke away from Scholz’s Social Democrats.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told France’s TV1 that Germany “will not wait” for other countries to send their Leopard tanks, contradicting Pistorius’s Ramstein speech that the requests should be long-term.
Germany argued at Ramstein that it could send one Leopard for every Abrams battle tank sent by the US. Military experts said the Abrams was too expensive to run and too difficult to train.
“This seems to have been Scholz’s original idea,” Alander said. “The idea is that I am doing well because Germany is dependent on the US nuclear umbrella and Germany is very close to the war.”
US President Joe Biden approved 31 Abrams tanks in Ukraine on Wednesday. But now the Ukrainian army will have to train three new military weapons – the British Challenger, the German Leopard and the American Abrams – all in order to convince Germany that it will not suffer from the serious opposition of Russia.
Ukraine’s military deployment began to stabilize in the second half of last year, when it became clear that the Ukrainian military needed to follow up on the success of Kherson and Kharkiv – if they were to bypass Russian settlements.
The European Council on Foreign Relations said it would send Ukraine 90 tanks, with the EU paying to replace the old 2A4 and 2A5 types sent to Ukraine with the new 2A7s. This modernization would allow Germany to rebuild its badly damaged Bundeswehr.
Weapons are flowing to Ukraine
Ukraine also won some important pledges last week.
On the eve of the Ramstein conference, nine EU members met in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, to pledge “unprecedented contributions” to Ukraine.
“We are committed to all complete the unprecedented donation, including main battle tanks, heavy artillery, air defense, weapons and combat vehicles to Ukraine,” the countries said in a document known as the Tallinn Declaration.
Poland said it would supply Ukraine with more Soviet T-72 tanks and 42 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles by March, as well as improving training.
Denmark said it would send Ukraine 19 self-propelled Cesar howitzers, infantry fighting vehicles, and Archer weapons, among others.
Sweden previously announced a $419m equipment package. The UK will send 600 Brimstone anti-tank missiles.
The US has pledged $2.5bn worth of weapons including more weapons, 59 Bradley Fighting Vehicles plus the 50 promised, and 90 Stryker APCs.
‘Throwing soldiers like missiles’
Ukraine will need all it can get. His troops fought a fierce battle to retake Novoselivske in Luhansk on January 19, and were awaiting reinforcements to advance to neighboring Kuzemivka. The Ukrainian advance was seen as an attempt to create a strategic position north of Svatove, where they could surround the Russian-held city.
But further south, in the Donetsk region, Russian troops continued to encircle Bakhmut, occupying the towns of Soledar and Klishchiivka and threatening communications.
“The fall of Bakhmut may have an impact on the entire security of Ukraine. They say that Russia is now throwing troops like missiles because that loss does not bother them,” Spiegel quoted a German intelligence report.
Ukraine has fewer people to pull from than Russia in these wars. The Ukrainian army is losing three soldiers every day, the German intelligence agency BND told a group of Bundestag lawmakers in a secret meeting last week – a reminder that the delay in the delivery of weapons is measured in lost lives.
