British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday pledged in a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that London will provide Kyiv with its main battle tank, the Challenger 2.
“The Prime Minister outlined the UK’s ambition to intensify our support to Ukraine, including through the provision of Challenger 2 tanks and additional artillery systems,” Sunak’s office said in a readout of the call.
The Challenger 2 could be the first Western-made heavy tank that Ukraine receives. Poland has said it’s ready to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv, but it’s not clear if Warsaw has officially begun the process of sending the tanks, which would involve formally asking Berlin for permission.
Britain is set to send 14 of the Challenger 2s in the coming weeks, far short of the 300 heavy tanks Ukrainian officials say they need. Poland has said it’s willing to send a similar number but is hoping to do so as part of an “international coalition.”
Germany’s vice chancellor has said Berlin wouldn’t block Poland from sending Leopard 2s to Ukraine, but there’s no sign yet that Germany is planning to send tanks of its own. There’s also no indication that the US is looking to send its Abrams tanks, but Washington has said it’s in favor of other countries’ plans to provide Kyiv with tanks.
Sending heavy battle tanks to Ukraine marks a significant escalation in military aid and risks provoking Moscow. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously said he was trying to avoid a direct clash between NATO and Russia when explaining his opposition to sending tanks.
In response to Sunak’s pledge, the Russian Embassy in London said such support would only prolong the war. “Bringing tanks to the conflict zone, far from drawing the hostilities to a close, will only serve to intensify combat operations, generating more casualties, including among the civilian population,” the embassy said.
If we are not very, very careful, we can cause this situation to spiral out of control and if continues to escalate, we could find ourselves in another World War…..
It’s like they’ve never heard the expression don’t poke the bear.
I’ve really enjoyed most of my time on planet earth but the one thing I worked towards was World Peace, most of my adult life… Something tells me that road may be closed…
If you worked towards world peace, how come you do not see Russia being allowed to annex large parts of a neighbor they had promised to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of, as the biggest threat to world peace?
I mean sure the Russians could start WWIII if they are being denied the right to annex parts of Ukraine, but do you actually think they prefer certain death over the risk of having to live like they did between 1991 and 2014?
Because the alternative is to tell all nations that having nukes is about the only thing that can guarantee their borders – and annexing part of weaker neighbors is their right.
Cant see how the alternative is not more likely to move us closer to nuclear war than sanctioning the Russians until they think better of their ‘foreign policy‘.
Read the articles in this site before babbling about peace. Russia didn’t invade out of the blue, there was far more justification for Russia to invade Ukraine than Dumbo bush invading Iraq. Probably a million Iraqis r dead because of that invasion and not one person was held to account for that war. Dumbo bush spending time painting dogs and neocons r still peddling more wars. Atleast Russia tried to go back to status quo of pre feb24 borders after realizing Ukraine will fight and fight hard. Boris Johnson personally went to Ukraine to tell them to reject the offer. Make no mistake I m totally against this invasion of Russia against sovereign Ukraine, but don’t paint it like some unique evil deed that threatening the international peace
Which is what I did – or did you some how manage to miss this point in your bias?
You might find this surprising but I actually agree – Bush had no justification, Putin just a really bad one.
And this somehow justifies Putin committing an other but similar crime?
Again that Bush got away with murder does not justify Putin getting away with it too – this is what id called whataboutery in case you did not know.
No they did not, the demand to get peace was that Ukraine had to drop any claims to sovereignty over Crimea, and not apply for NATO membership – so not status quo by any standards.
But it is unique – there is only no other nations that I can remember that have been ‘allowed’ to start a war by invading a neighbor to annex territory and not been met with sanctions – that is since the end of the cold war.
Israel is the closest we can get to this and the fact that the US has held their hand over them and thus prevented e.g. European sanctions is a very poor justification for not sanctioning Russia (whataboutery again).
Whataboutism is a way of denying valid points and claiming different rules for different people, so no surprise u r using this
Well status quo in line of control is status quo. Crimea could’ve been part of further discussion and let us not kid ourselves, Any un mandated vote would give same results and Ukraine isn’t getting in collective defense the issue was defacto nato architecture withing Ukraine that caused this war, so it was pretty much status quo.
Enforcement of rules against some and not against others is unjust by definition.
No whataboutism is literally throwing in the ‘what about XYZ’ as a way to derail the debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Moreover I actually answered your what about question, without deflecting it by a what about xyz so I was manifestly not using this trick – nor indeed ignoring the point you raised.
Yes my bad, missed the point that you had restricted it to borders.
With the important exception that Ukraine had to end its claim to Crimea – that it may get a different result in a different vote does not change that it would be a whitewash of the illegal annexation by Russia.
But not nearly as bad for peace as allowing all killers to go free because one killer got to go free – which is what you are proposing here.
Both killars have nukes. One’s action caused the the deaths of millions( mostly civilians)for a war without justification. Another’s caused the death of mostly combatants ( I m not denying hiw it is a great tragedy that patriots defending their land r dying. It genuinely saddens me how so many patriotic sons of Ukraine will not be around to rebuild the country or will live the rest of their days with crippling disability, and all because the answered the call of their homeland)in the hundreds of thousands for a war with flawed justifications. When u let go of a serial killar without even condemning him and punish a man beating someone to death then there is no justice but exercise of power through lawfare
Mbs is waking around without any issue, the Burmese general mah masterminding the rohynga genocide is going about his business, it seems only putin has to be punished, wonder why? Hmm he is killing the denizens of the garden so his evil is unique.
I doubt it very much Russia would refuse to run it back under un mandate with Chinese and Indian observers, Ukraine just walked away from the talks so we will never know.
So are you for nuclear proliferation – because your justification for not applying sanctions to Russia is then that they have nukes, not that they cannot be sanctioned, and that almost certainly will lead more nations to get nukes.
Why do you presume to know that the Ukrainians are dying in a war with flawed justification – they are dying to defend an independent and sovereign Ukraine if that is enough for them why do you suppose that it is flawed because you see that others have other reasons to support Ukriane?
Sure but you are proposing that the cure to the world having to condone one serial killer is to condone far more – I can see that this would be just as in one law for all, but I cannot see that we would see less war or a better world by this approach.
The issue with what Putin has done is that if not sanctioned then it will make wars a very much more attractive solution in many cases for many countries. War is in general a very costly affair, by denying nations the right to annex territory through war, we have made the advantage of going to war very much smaller, this is why we have to sanction Putin, not because his war is specifically bad in the way it kills people or because he is in any way more evil than so many other leaders.
…flawed justification for Russia my man, I thought I made it abundantly clear. Why would I think Ukrainian cab do anything else other than fight for their land after a full scale invasion!!!!. Others r supporting Ukrainian to bleed Russia and clear the board to take on China.
No I m not advocating for nuclear proliferation,neither r the world powers. They have made the cost so high only states like nk that pursue nukes above all else can get it. The bargain is simple u get nuke but ur society becomes a basket case because of the strain the collective world powers put on u(that includes Russia and China), Pakistan was an accident and nk has a very weird mix that cannot be replicated. No other state other than Japan can become a nuclear weapon state in the future whether it’s an unipolar order or a multipolar order. Countries like Myanmar or Eritrea that has the repressive apparatus don’t have the capability to aquire one.
I have never denounced western sanctions and I have used this same point when arguing against annexation of kherson and zaparosia.this welcomes other states like Myanmar or Rwanda to try something like this, but I m against west trying to impose extra territorial sanctions like sanctioning other states for doing business with Russia.let west refuse to give banking services to Russians but they can’t threaten banks of other states with sanctions for doing deals with Russia.
But none of my arguments were against sanctions themselves my arguments r about pointing out western hypocrisy, and how west DEFINITELY bears a lot of responsibility for this conflict( Russia is CHIEFLY responsible for starting this latest episode even though us pushed it towards this miscalculation) and finally the help the us is giving to Ukraine is not to help Ukraine but to severely weaken Russia and remove putin from power.
You made it kind of clear but then you also wrote: “…all because the answered the call of their homeland)in the hundreds of thousands for a war with flawed justifications.” – if by that you meant that Putin’s justification for sending young Russians to die is flawed then we completely agree, if you meant that the Ukrainian justification for the war is flawed then not so much – the Ukrainians do not justify the war they defend their land against an invasion and do not believe that there is a justification for the war as in it should never have started.
I think you are very wrong to think that other states cannot become nuclear powers – Israel almost certainly have nukes and a country like Sweden could also both afford and develop nukes – as could Iran, and at some point in the future also Iraq, Egypt also has the capacity.
The issue is that if nukes is what allows a country not only safety from (primarily US) invasion but also to in SMO fashion claim attractive regions of neighboring countries, then nukes becomes a hell of a lot more attractive and getting one a lot less likely to mean that your country becomes a basket case as the will of the population to carry the burden of getting the weapons becomes a lot higher.
Good to hear – in general I’m against secondary sanctions too – however not for the restricted case where the sanctions apply to states that buy goods from e.g. the EU that an EU country is not on account of the sanctions allowed to sell to Russia, only to export it further to Russia.
The problem I have with this is that as I see it, at the bottom of this is a view that Russian security concerns trump sovereignty of their neighbors – as in I would never have accepted that the US ‘had’ to invade Cuba because Castro’s revolution was funded by the Soviets – I apply the same standard to Russia in the present – if they wanted they could apply sanctions to Ukraine.
You, at least it seems to me, think that the west’s is somehow responsible for Russia invading, though NATO denied Ukrainian membership of NATO, placed no nukes in any of the new NATO countries (those that joined after 1991). I can’t see how the idea that the west is responsible is not somehow connected to judging Russia’s neighbors as non sovereign states (second class citizens of the world) not free to seek neither safety in alliances nor in economic corporation.
U made a good point with regards to nukes. Ofcourse Israel has nukes which I failed to mention but I think Israel and nk r unique and cannot be replicated. With regards to others there can be influence op and outright bribery to topple governments that pursue nukes and information operations to redirect public anger. I simply do not see any nation state successfully going that path towards developing nuclear weapons. Iran is not trying to get the bomb and they r in this much trouble simply because they r trying to get threshold capabilities and that proves my point.
I m in full agreement with u with regards to sanctions.
Blaming west for starting this conflict does not make me deny Ukrainian sovereignty. A nation state is sovereign when will of the people is respected. With 2014 coup us helped a faction initiate a successful coup that thwarted the will of the people and installed a government that went against the will of half of Ukrainian population, and things were set in motion that led to this ILLIGAL AND IMMORAL invasion. U probably don’t visit site that often or even if u do u don’t read the chat because I have always denounced this feb24 invasion. I was perfectly fine with an un mandated referendum on Crimea and minks 2 failing that un mandated referendum on Crimea dpr and lpr and if us blocked it THEN Russia administered referendum on dpr lpr but never an outright invasion.
I would agree – in a global political ‘system’ where acquiring nukes led to sanctions (even fairly ineffective ones) and nukes provided security almost only from US led invasion only very dysfunctional states were likely to force the costs of developing them on their populations, in a new world where SMO’s would face no sanctions that calculus is completely changed.
My point is that there would be no public anger to redirect – developing nukes even in peaceful Sweden would have popular support if Russia wins sanctions are lifted, Sweden is denied NATO membership (or NATO dissolved).
The counter point being that Iran faces a very tough sanctions regime – in the ‘world order’ that would be in place if Russia is not sanctioned for annexing large parts of Ukraine applying such sanctions would not be feasible – and the calculus therefore changes. The Iranians would be well advised to develop nukes for their own safety or more specifically territorial integrity as other nuclear powers on their borders would be likely to SMO themselves to parts of Iran.
Glad to hear that we can agree on that at least.
I agree that the government between February 2014 and August same year had no legal status and at best a very dubious democratic support – they were themselves aware of this, which is why they set about to hold a democratic election. Is it your position that a nation can’t ever oust a government that no longer acts according to the program on which they were elected?
The government of the time had abandoned a promise to pursue a policy of approaching EU, the government of Zelenskyy had by late 2021 abandoned a policy of de-escalation or peace with Russia – in both cases did/had a movement succeeded in ousting the administration and proceeded to hold democratic elections ASAP then I did / and would have accepted the outcome.
Guilty as charged.
I would have been OK with this only if the Russians had not already annexed Crimea and changed the composition of the population there – and the same holds true for the LPR and the DPR, only Russia has not annexed these territories before 2022, but the Russian backed separatist movement has done the same – before 2014 had such referenda been held in these oblasts there would likely only have been doubt about Crimea (as in doubt about just how much they wanted to be free of Kyiv) – the other two oblasts had majority Ukrainian populations.
The points I don’t respond to r the ones where we just see things differently as is the case of most of things u stated in this response.
2014 was a copu and anything that comes as result of a coup is illegal unless the people who ousted by that coup agrees to the new elections to sort it out. This is especially the case when democratically elected yanukovich government( or is it ushenko I frequently confuse one with the other) agreed to a snap election and all of this could’ve been sorted out through that process. It was absolutelyessential,especially in a deeply divided country like Ukraine. But us(or the neocons within the power structures) didn’t want to take any chances and pushed for a coup, they even handpicked the leader “yats is the guy” who shortly became a billionaire. Biden picking nuland again proves he gave his blessings to this coup.
Referendums can be held by 2014 voter roll with add-ons for the one who were inhabitants of the territory but were not of age.
I m in agreement with u regarding the results in dpr and lpr pre 2014 but now I m sure dpr and lpr will vote to join Russia after 8 years of shelling, and this is counting the ones who left the territories for Ukrainian controlled territories. No sane person would suggest Russia put people from Russia to these territories.
Sure it is illegal, however the very nature of public protests make them difficult to ‘govern’ hence though all the main supposed leaders of the ‘opposition’ signed the agreement to hold snap elections their ability to govern the protesters – and the agreement fell apart. It would have been ever so much better had it not, but what you are here the proposing is that a country that has gone through such a coup can never again get legitimacy – that would entail that a great many countries are ‘illegal’ i.e. that their government has no legal status.
Hence while I too would very much have preferred a snap election I acknowledge that this apparently was just not to be, I then have to ask you is it your position that any following Ukrainian government will be illegal for ever no matter how many election cycles we are later? If so you have concluded that a nation has no way of ridding itself of a government that has gone rogue.
I do not agree with this presentation of the known facts – as in the leaders of the opposition were well established in politics before Biden and/or Nuland expressed their preferences for collaborating with any of them. Nor do I agree with the idea that it was the US which through these people pushed for a coup.
The person (if we have to pick just one) who ended up breaking the agreement to hold a snap election was not any of the people named by the US (neither Biden nor Nuland) but Volodymyr Zinoviyovych Parasyuk. Thus the idea that Arseniy Yatsenyuk or Vitali Klitschko (the two persons I can remember Nuland mentioning – who had signed the agreement were not the people rejecting the agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_settlement_of_political_crisis_in_Ukraine#Evaluation_agreement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Parasyuk
Do these still exist? If so I think this would be an excellent proposition – I believe that it might find approval from Kyiv (if not now then at some not too distant point in the future when/if they have found out that winning the war outright is just too ‘expensive’).
I’m less convinced that the people in the territories not held by the separatists (i.e. 2/3 of LPR and DPR) would vote to be Russian, but I guess that is why I believe the Ukrainians may be convinced to hold such a referendum to end the war.
I said if a democratically elected government is ousted through a coup then there needs to be buy in from the people who voted for them and the ones who were voted in to acquiesce to new election to have any validity and that is true no matter the time lapse
Government gone rogue? U can vote them out next election. This especially so if country is deeply divided politically
Sure that is why they held am election ASAP after the old government had been ousted.
Only works if you trust the current government to give you a second vote and not do non repairable harm to the country in the meantime – that is where the government failed, as has many governments before it. What you seem to be proposing is that no time and no amount of democratic elections can repair that a coup has happened in the past.
That makes a lot of countries flawed – is that your contention? If so why – how do you justify that many of the countries we would ordinarily think outstanding examples of democratic states are somehow now fatally illegal and thus it would be right for the Russians or the US to invade to repair this flaw of the past?
U didn’t read or comprehend what I said.
The immediate election process was rejected by the half that saw their democratic mandate being overturned and as long as they didn’t buy into it it is not legitimate. Only now after this idiotic Russian miscalculation have most of the Russian origin Ukrainians within lands controlled by Ukraine have bought into the Ukrainian identity.
Yes, when u cannot trust the government to carry through promised reform election u get popular revolution but when u carry out a coup backed by half the population against a democratically elected government elected by the other half u get civil war. Proof is in the pudding with regards to what happened.
My bad if I did not get the point.
I have a hard time interpreting this – which half rejected what?
If we are talking about the snap election deal then it was rejected by a large segment of the protesters in Kyiv – unknown (likely very doubtful) if they represented a half of the electorate. They however were able to force Yanukovych flee the country. This was clearly not legitimate.
Is it your position that this underlying fact about how the legitimate government was forced from power, prevents Ukraine from ever achieving legitimacy, no matter how many democratic elections they have after this event? If so how could they ever achieve legitimacy again?
That is also my perception of the effects of the SMO.
Only that is not what actually happened – there was a small (no where near half) part of the population in Donetsk and Luhansk who were so angered by the ousting of their government and the following riots and chaos that they wanted to start a separatist movement.
To achieve this they sought support from Russia – only upon getting that help did what would have been very severe riots progress into what became a civil war. Would the Kyiv government have proceeded to ethnically cleanse Donetsk and Luhansk – only if they wanted to ruin their chances of a closer relation to EU.
Could that still have happened – yes – the Russian annexation of Crimea had exacerbated the lawlessness unleashed by the chaos following the ousting of the legitimate government. It does however seem to me that even with the severe interference from the Russian side the overall trajectory was one that moved the Kyiv government away from excessive use of force towards minorities.
This is reflected in the lower and lower number of casualties in the Donbas and in the progressive loss of political influence of the extreme nationalists in parliament – after all if Ukraine was really in need of denazification then they would hardly have elected a Russian speaking president standing on a platform of peace.
So when Germans said ok go send ur tanks Poland now backing away and saying they want to send it part of an international coalition. They played the same games with jets
Out of everyone in EU, Britain is arguably the biggest warmonger and suffered the worst economic outcome in this war. Heck, their ambulance and nurses are even on strike because the 10%+ inflation. But guess what? Their new warmongering PM is all in on prolonging the bloodshed in Ukraine and letting their own healthcare system collapse. Priorities right Rishi?
Well, part of the British economic problem is Brexit, not the Ukraine war. But aside from that, yes, Britain has done more to aggravate the Ukraine war than any other nation in Europe. Sending Boris Johnson to put the kibosh on a negotiated peace last Spring is one example. And I think Britain is a likely suspect in the NordStream sabotage. I don’t understand the motivation, except that the US and UK remain close buddies. But I think there is more that will come to light, by and by.
Those Brexiters didn’t realize the result of leaving the EU would be more subservience to America. I don’t think they really care.
This is bad theater. 14 tanks aren’t worth talking about. I guess the idea is to get weapon transfers normalized, get a DMZ stabilized somewhere, and see how much money they can spend. I suppose Moscow will play along to a point.
Maybe they could use some target practice.
Three different tanks with three different difficult sets of logistical, maintenance, and training problems. This, to the most corrupt nation in Europe that has had its capacity to do that maintenance wiped out by Russian missiles. But more orders will be placed to arms contractors, so what’s a little death compared to all the lovely profits?
Dribbling in three different tanks into an active war zone without air cover is beyond farce. You have to wonder where they’ll find crews smart enough to operate them but dumb enough to do it. All the retired military out there who know how ridiculous this is need to speak up.
It does seem like a fool’s errand.
On the other hand “without air cover” is a statement that begs at least two questions.
1) Do they need air cover? From what I can gather, the Russian air force isn’t especially active vis a vis manned aircraft in the theater, possibly because Ukrainian air defenses are reasonably effective.
2) Do they really not have air cover? Every other day I see someone claiming that the only reason the Ukrainians haven’t collapsed yet is because they have NATO troops doing their heavy lifting for them. If that’s the case, why assume that none of those NATO troops are driving, say, Warthogs?
Oh yeah, maybe the Ghost of Kiev is up patrolling in an A-10 right now. I get the impression the Russians are being conservative with their aircraft but I doubt the Ukrainian air force flies anywhere near the war zone. You have to wonder how constrained the Russians are by MPADs and SAMs, but if MiGs are under threat from Ukraine I wouldn’t even stand next to an A-10 with the Russians around.
You made an assumption.
I pointed out that it’s an assumption, not a known fact.
No biggie.
During WW2 Churchill gave Stalin a number of British tanks. Among the Russian soldiers who used them they became known as “a coffin for five brothers”.
“British PM Sunak Confirms the UK Will Provide Ukraine With Tanks The UK will send 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks” ” Poland has said it’s willing to send a similar number but is hoping to do so as part of an “international coalition.””
So the supply cabin will try to maintain British and German tanks with different guns and different engines. These tanks also require a 4th crew member to function as a loader.
The Russians can produce between 850 and 1000 tanks each year with compatible engines and guns.
Does anyone see a problem with logistics and shear numbers with the above numbers and parts issues?
It’s silly, really, and just being done for show. The Ukrainian army has no tank transporters that can move something as heavy as a Challenger. They also have no recovery vehicles powerful enough to tow a broken down one. Also, no 120mm rifled ammunition stocks; or spare parts. MAYBE they might be able to get these things down to the Kherson front; but no way can they get them east to Donetsk/Luhansk and keep them running.
Tanks? No tanks.
British PM Sunak Confirms the UK Will Provide Ukraine With Cocaine