President Biden on Wednesday announced that his administration will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, marking another major escalation of US military support for Kyiv.
The pledge came just days after Pentagon officials said they didn’t plan to send the Abrams citing the fact that it would be difficult to maintain. But the US decided to send the tanks anyway as part of a deal to persuade Germany to provide its own Leopard 2 tanks.
The German government confirmed on Wednesday that it would send 14 Leopard 2s and that it would allow the export of the German-made tank from other countries. Poland has said it’s ready to send Leopard 2s, and according to German media reports, Spain, Finland, and the Netherlands will do so as well.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously resisted sending tanks, citing his desire to prevent a clash between Russia and NATO. But the US and other NATO countries aren’t concerned about the risk of escalation and put pressure on Scholz, resulting in him agreeing to provide the Leopard 2 if the US sends the Abrams.
On top of sending the Abrams, the US will provide Ukraine with training, spare parts, and other related equipment. The US recently launched new training programs for Ukrainian soldiers in Germany and at a military base in Oklahoma, where Ukrainians are learning how to use Patriot missile defense systems.
Administration officials told POLITICO that the Abrams tanks are being provided through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), meaning they could take months or years to be delivered. “There are technical aspects to the Abrams, which makes it a little bit more challenging than some systems that we have provided,” one administration official said.
Under the USAI, the US purchases arms for Ukraine, making it a longer process than just sending the equipment from Pentagon stockpiles. The Leopard 2 tanks will probably be delivered much more quickly as they are being pulled from German military stocks.
Another official said that the US had to provide the tanks through the USAI because it doesn’t have enough in its own stockpiles. “As with other capabilities, youโve seen us do this before if we do not have readily within US stocks, then we go the procurement route to make sure that we can procure the right capability for Ukraine,” the official said.
The US has depleted its own stockpiles of artillery ammunition by shipping over one million shells to Ukraine. As a result, the Pentagon is working to increase shell production by 500%, as the policy of flooding Ukraine with weapons is a boon for US arms makers.
Great. So we both manage to escalate the war by sending German tanks into war with Russia, AND we give them 1.5% of the tanks actually requested. Such a deeply cynical proxy war we are waging. Just enough to keep us all inching towards apocalypse so our oil loving masters can make a few more bucks off of human misery.
That’s the most fucked up part of the US involvement in this: we are obviously doing this to force Europe to use American gas and the world to buy fossil fuel energy in dollars to prolong the status quo that is literally killing the biosphere.
If nothing else, even if we somehow managed to force Russia into being another failed state whose energy we control without killing everyone, this definitely signals that there is absolutely no will in our establishment to make any of the necessary changes to avoid climate catastrophe. This is the west forcing the world to keep buying and using carbon, and to prop up the dollar doing it.
No such thing as climate change. Haven’t you heard.
Someone better tell the climate.
31
Thirty one???
THIRTY ONE?????
National Interest has an article that states that with these tanks and up to 100 NATO Leopard tanks that Russia is doomed, and that US/NATO forces will be in Russia soon.
And has been stated before, the US does not seem to be in a hurry to get these tanks to Ukraine.
US military strategy seems to prioritize getting as much equipment destroyed as possible so that the US business community will have more replacement orders to profit from. The amounts being publicly announced are very very low.
It’s possible that the other 469 tanks are in a separate delivery that will not be announced.
It’s unlikely that number is truthful. A modest napkin math assessment factors out to about 1800 tanks needed along with the army to fight alongside it, about 5-6 old fashioned divisions worth, divide that down to the modern BTG and you understand the numbers just don’t add up. Put that together with unverified videos of trains loaded with Leos and M1’s, and you have what amounts to some very pointed questions which I’m sure wont be asked by anyone in the west’s envelope of propaganda coverage.
What you wrote makes sense. If the number of tanks needed to make a difference is anywhere near your 1800 number, then the recent articles about tanks and likely artillery shell production as well is all make believe and just for show.
That’s the same conclusion my friend in Serbia came to, his words exactly:
“It’s a moot talking point. It will increase the firepower and capability
of select few Ukro units, after about three months, and that capability
will be reduced in about a week. It is just for show.”
We have thousands of these in mothballs. Getting them blown up may end up saving us money. The numbers do lead one to think “fart in a hurricane” 500 and now we are talking.
There you go again with that “saving money” pipe dream. Anything blown up will be replaced with more expensive toys. You seem unaware how this game works. It has nothing to do with saving money.
As if Russia. can’t stop tanks with all their weapons, tactical NUKES too. It’s funny, really a hoot… !!!!! They can VAPORIZE tanks….!!!!
A nice BIG target!!!!!! Hard to miss…
Send Biden with them.
With BIG letters that read: DO NOT RETURN.
They won’t be returned . They’ll be targeted and destroyed . We are on the edge of World War 3 now.
So it seems and it scares the hell out of me.
Come on. It will be great theater.
as long as we have the electricity to watch it anyway
I supply you with the gift of one free imbecile. Use him wisely.
Germany has tiny balls.
Or perhaps none at all … I am amazed at the people of western europe taking this destruction of their economic well being lying down.
They are standing UP, Not lying down……!!!!!!
Protesting does nothing – just ask global elite parasites!
LOL. But we have seen Germany with BIG balls and we know what that can look like….
Their balls were cut off by the U.S. & Russia They have no NUKES.. No nukes is helpless in 2023!!!!
Garland Nixon: “Olaf Scholz has the spine of a jellyfish.”
Never underestimate how far the shining city on a hill will go to punish those who dare to pursue their own interests. German leaders know they are not immune to another color revolution if they do not play ball.
Oh, great … 31 unmaintainable tanks. They will make great monuments for future parade grounds in the Donbas. Kids can climb on them and play make believe war, which would be the best use for these wastes of money.
The Abrams package comes with two tow trucks I believe.
Ha!
Wouldn’t it be cool to place a destroyed M1 Tank Exhibit in Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) to remind future generations of the ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ cost of accepting aid from the US?
Congratulations to Volodymyr Zelensky for gaslighting Germany into sending the first German tanks to Russia’s borders since Barbarossa. Give him another f**king Oscar!
You speak a language I can understand CH.
Nothing different than Putin selling his personal war to the Russian people.
Oscar for that one too.
It is not Putins personal war to keep NATO from having a first strike advantage from Ukraine AND to protect the Russian speakers of Donbas and Lugansk. Would you have slurred JFK had he invaded Cuba to prevent Russian nukes 90 miles from Miami…. ???? Just get a sane life!
Not disagreeing with you there. The award for biggest d*ck in the universe would be a tossup between Putin and Zelensky if Biden wasn’t a thing.
I doubt there will be many Ukrainian soldiers left to drive them after Bakhmut falls. If they can even get shipped to where they need to be. This will result in more rounds of strikes against railway stations and power stations at the very least.
Or strikes of American citizens when they wake up to the meaning of all of this spending. Millions are protesting in France, millions in UK, as governments made moves to impoverish population to have money for war chest. US, UK and France will be the money bags, Poland and Germany, the body bags.
So far, on schedule. Russia is not escallating, just waiting. US clearly is in the clutches of elite itching for an adventure โ to go to war against Russia. The latest window for negotiations is closed now, with Germany pushed kicking and screaming closer to war with Russia. Stupid Poland. It will be crushed in between.
And if populace does not see the red flashing lights, it will be too late to stop the zealots in power from making catastrophic mistakes. US is blessed with its geography, remotenes from Eurasian landmass. And blessed with resources. Had the same elite not squandered our industrial advantages through another ideological globalist fantasy we would have been the envy of the world. Sitting pretty, not needing geopolitical jousting.
But now in clutches of financialized economy, real wealth has lost its meaning. Only financial magic matters, and its logic inexorably pushes for destruction of real wealth to justify crashing of its mega baloon.
There is still time to walk back to sanity. Hopefully, they will get cold feet. Hopefully they will notice how their old games do not work. Like charm offensive on China. Send Schultz to China, get US heavyweights to workk on China, even Australia sending warm and fuzzy feelers to China. What, China is supposed to be elated, to ditch Russia?
Our heavyweights China will devour for breakfast. Sure, it will receive with pleasure the improvement in climate. But will not do anything to dismantle its relatiins with Russia. They are two sides of the same Eurasian coin.
Then what? India has not moved one inch. We are furious with Turkey. Iran is now openly Russian ally, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, SouthbAfrica, Brazil, Mexico โ all giving us cold shoulder.
But we keep on playing games.
This is where our hard earned tax money goes.
Bianca, I keep wondering what the Maidan coup plotters of 2014, Obama, Clinton & Nuland hoped to precipitate, and what the end game would be that they risked WWIII to accomplish?
They had a long term goal. In all East European countries during Cold War we established contacts, funded and glorified dissent. What is less known is that the fabled disent against communism was deliberately tapping into remnants of Nazi resentment.
These post WWII Nazis and offspring were offered a lifeline โ they were just anti-communist. It worked magic. Especially in Croatia and Baltic states , resulting in Christian Orthidox being targets of expulsion. It all worked just fine.
But Ukraine was to be a special project in making a country that was Russian and pro-Russian, and allow a minority from former pro-Nazi West Ukraine with Ruthenian dialect to declare themselves not only anti-communist, but also TRUE Ukrainians. With the goal to convert all of Ukraine into this new entity,
I do not think Russia believed that could work . But it almost did. With Donbas in limbo, and Crimea gone, Maidan leaders set out to implement cultural revolutiion with the mix of fear, incentive, legal prohibitions of language, right to form political party, shutting down cultural institutions, and reforming education. All of it was done with a heavy doze of Russia hate, to indicrinate young into believing being Russian speaker is detestable. Those deemed dangerous were executed. Teachers fired.
What was the purpose? To turn Ukraine into another Lithuania, where Russia hate defines their identity. In 19t century, an educator and a linguist soecializing in Classical Greek and Latin founded a committee to reform language. The result was โ an entirely artificial language with what was assumed to be ancient Lithuanian (not attested anywhere, including rural communities it supposedly revived). The end result was โ language artificially infused with Latin and Greek, with still an underlying Slavic grammar. The creator himself changed his name to get the noble -us ending. So, words have mostly Latin/Greek -us, -is, -as endings.
This artificial language Soviets encouraged and through generations became real.
They are even attempting to redefine Sanskrit grammar to show that these endings may have existed in nominative! Craziness to no end. I researched one such book, and embarrasingly โ asterisks are placed everywhere next to such creations, with explanation: RECONSTRUCTED NOT ATTESTED,
Now, that is a good trick!
Reason for pointing Lithuanian example is simple. A nation whose langage was like many in Baltic area a combinatiiin of Slavic, Germanic, Norse and Uralic โ became a taget iof educated elite 18th century that was ashamed if its lowly Slavic identity,
And as a result, create a nation that is obsessed with not being Slavic,.
This process PRECISELY has been copied in Ukraine. Not only to create โUkrainianโ language, but an identity separare from and hating Russian.
Our leadership knows very well what this is all about. PERFECTLY.
Think if this this way. Europe always had a historic dread of Slavic natiins. And for a reason. West Europeans German expansiin started in Riman times from Netherlands region, whike Saxons came down into Central Europe only after the fall of Riman empire. Roman period caused migratiions West to East. In nutshell, it was inly Charmemagne in 800โs that fought Slavuc tribes and pushed them back establishing a line from his new founded military city of Hanburg, across the headwaters of Rhine and Danube into Austria. The first German settlers did not enter Vienna until 10 century,
As a result many languages disappeared. Transitional languages. Mix of Russian and Norse, mix of Russian, Sorrabian and German (Prussian). Incidentally countryโs official name was PRUSIJA.
Folliwing Catholic-Protestant wars, the countries that became Catholuc were always pitted by Vatican against Orthodox Christians. Catholics were by definition drawn into Western world, with all the history of crushing their Slavuc identity and religion โ erased from history.
This is a process of erasing natives, integrating them into new identities that are then put in the front line in the battle against the remaining โothernessโ.
As Putin put it โ โwe may look like you, but we are not youโ. It is the otherness that does not accept being inferior, and being assimilated.
As Calgacus said of Roman Empire โ lust for even most barren Scottish land was irresistible,. People who crave power cannot stop themselves. They create desert and call it peace.
And I have barely scratched a surface.
Thank You Bianca for your reply. It is not quite the explanation I was expecting,. I now see your answer as opening up channels of inquiry and expectations which go beyond the plans and hopes of the small minds that were the troops on the ground at. Maidan. Going after bigger and more sinister ends more like Mao. As in cultural revolution.
The tanks are probably in Ukraine already. Evil never sleeps. Otherwise, humanity is not going to destroy itself, people. Don’t worry. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. (Sarcasm alert)
“I’m insane, so what!” – Joe Biden
I really enjoy the spirit of co-operation but my preference would be for peace as oppose to being the world’s largest arms manufacturer and supplier. The risk of escalation, between the US and Russia should be of paramount concern.
FWIW: (I have not pursued its authenticity)
I picked this up from a comment in another blog: to state the obvious, if true, it certainly raises the risk level and the stakes as the us has used depleted uranium extensively in past conflicts.
This is FLASH TRAFFIC: Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russia Delegation to the Organization for Security and Coorperation in Europe (OSCE) has just publicly thrown down the nuclear gauntlet to the collective west, in an official statement:
Gavrilov said that he has been instructed by his government to announce โWe know that the Leopard-2 tank, as well as the Bradley and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, are armed with uranium-core armor-piercing projectiles, the use of which leads to [radioactive] contamination of the area, as happened in Yugoslavia and Iraq.
If such shells are delivered to Kyiv, we will consider this as the use of dirty nuclear bombs against Russia, with all the ensuing consequences.
This is vicious. Ukrainians soil is the richest in Europe. All the rivers that carried melted ice waters flowing down to Black Sea basin brought silt, meters of deposits.
I thiught they stopped usung those. An idiot came up with this idea in order to get rid of depleted uranium from nuclear power plants.
Hope this is not true.
Unfortunately, I have long given up on the us govt, state/cia/ acting responsibly. They collectively are demonic and obsessive and will not forgo any measure, particularly if it looks like they will go down in flames and complete failure.
Hmmm first of all r they m1a1 or m1a2, secondly it seems it will take months to arrive…well things can be reversed if things on the ground go badly…..no one wants to see us tanks being captured and displayed in paraded in Kremlin. I do but certainly no us leadership or it’s mic
I canโt imagine the army sending them A2โs with the upgrades. Perhaps they will be sending older M1โs from Guard or Reserve stock and have them depot refurbished to a functional standard.The army had tanks being built in Egypt under General Dynamics management and those vehicles were not equipped with all the upgrades our army and marines were receiving.
Ty for the info.
This reminds me of the famous Chinese finger trap. The harder NATO pushes, the more they get stuck. Lt. Colonial McGregor summarized it the best, no amount of tanks will save Ukraine.
Colonel McGregor also said that all these tanks will do is prop up a corpse.
What I hear in all the noise around tanks โ whose tanks? It seems to matter most of all that the tanks are German. Why? It seems to me that neocons absolute dream come true us Germany going in Russia again. both bleed again.
This is what this Leopard thing was meant to accomplish โ Russians to hate Germans again. Just as the paunful past was putting to rest โ somebody does not want that.
German foreign minister just declared war on Russia……German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated that Western allies are fighting a war against Russia.
Is it just me that thinks seeing German tanks on the Russian border is a disgrace. This will not end well.
Someone wants hard to get Germans to show enthusism to fight Russians, but the goal of deindustrialising Germany has already been achieved. The consequences are here already. Why is German political class so slow to act? Google German deindusttialuzation. It is shocking. Mirgentau plan is becoming reality โ with enthusiastic German participation.
This just tells us that anything can be done if presented properly.
It is like eugenics. Horrible word, horrible images. Why not present it in attractive light, human right, kindness? Abortion, alternative childless sexual life styles, identity multiplication, sex change. Attention seeking parents are all in! Medications that prove deadly, steep rise in population mortality โ hearings going on in UK. In US, shorter and shorter life span has been our reality for years. Anybody cares.
From a Marxist perspective, this is class warfare on steroids.
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense. What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final NATO war against Russia.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
377 Aircraft, 204 helicopters, 2948 UAV’s, 402 Anti Aircraft systems, 7627 tanks inc. APC’s, 988 multiple rocket launchers, 3906 rocket launchers and 8171 military automotive equipment.
Russia is going to finish off this War by the end of April and they will dictate the terms of the Treaty and it will include Odessa, Transnistria, Dnipro and whatever else they want. The Ukraine will then be a landlocked non-entity.
Russia was going to finish off this war by last April, too.
well they are just collecting dust over here
We need more money for MIC, we need new tanks!
Let’s dump the old ones to Cocainsky, aren’t we smart?
Well, on the bright side for Russia, they will have thousands or perhaps millions of tons of steel from destroyed outdated tanks and other outdated equipment to recycle into profitable products in demand globally if/when Russia wins. How many cars can be produced from the steel of each destroyed old tank? Dozens I suspect, but I am not in a profession that can properly calculate that number!
31? Yeah that should do it…
One might see what Biden is doing here, and never know that the US hit its debt limit of $31.4 trillion this week; or that an additional $45 billion had to be added to the defense budget last year to adjust for the inflation that Biden has ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ caused.
At some point in the next few months we’ll get the “we just don’t have money to pay federal employees or give promised benefits — here’s another $100 billion for Ukraine!”
The Abrams delivery is only to placate Germany.
They will be parked somewhere and never used.
If they are used they will be used as fixed pieces of artillery.
Same for Challengers
They might be used as self-propelled artillery rather than fixed. But given their fuel usage, their small numbers, and the lack of well-trained crews to man them, etc., they don’t seem like good candidates for use in the traditional maneuver warfare manner for tanks. Which makes them an expensive show-off thing rather than especially effective military aid.