15-Jan.-2023
editor|Toney Wild

 

     Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a telephone call on Saturday

about the United Kingdom’s “ambition to intensify our support to Ukraine, including through the provision of Challenger 2 tanks and additional artillery systems,” a statement from Downing Street said. The UK indicated it will provide tanks to Ukraine on Saturday which would reverse the West’s nearly yearlong resistance to giving the Ukrainians some of its most powerful weapons to fight Russia.

Kyiv has pleaded for Western tanks almost since the start of the war to supplement the Soviet-era and Russian-made tanks that were in Ukraine’s stockpiles or supplied by other countries in Eastern Europe. Those tanks are wearing out fast after months of battle. The push to satisfy Kyiv’s pleas gained momentum this week as the British and Polish governments publicly urged a change in the Western alliance’s stance.

The British statement on Saturday was expected to ratchet up pressure on Germany to commit to sending its coveted Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, or to at least allow other European countries that have those German-made tanks to give them to Ukraine. The Polish government said this week that it wanted to give Ukraine some of its German-made tanks, though Berlin would need to allow it.

Mr. Sunak’s office did not specify how many tanks Britain might send, though British media have reported in recent days that it would be around a dozen.

Britain will begin training the Ukrainian forces to use the tanks and guns in the coming days, the prime minister’s office said, as part of wider efforts that have seen thousands of Ukrainian troops trained in Britain over the last six months.

The Russian Embassy in London said in a statement that providing tanks to Ukraine would “only serve to intensify combat operations” and warned that Challenger tanks would be a legitimate target for Russian forces.

Mr. Zelensky did not mention tanks in his nightly address on Saturday, but he said that his conversation with Mr. Sunak had covered “some very important things for our defense.”

“Details will come later, but it’s important,” he said, adding that “I believe that similar decisions will still be made by other partners.”

The Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said in a Twitter post that Britain had committed itself to providing its troops with the Challenger tanks. “With NATO-style tanks, we will move toward victory much faster,” he wrote.

The Challenger 2 would be the first Western-made main battle tank to be sent to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February. Officials in the United States and Europe have long worried that sending tanks could prompt President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to escalate the conflict.

That calculus has begun to change in recent weeks, as Western officials worry they have limited time to help Ukraine prepare for an anticipated Russian offensive this spring. They have become more willing to take risks, in part because the Ukrainians have performed so well on the battlefield and have used other sophisticated Western weapons well.

Ukraine’s most senior military commander, General Valery Zaluzhnyi, has said his military needs some 300 Western tanks and about 600 Western armored fighting vehicles to make a difference in battles for control of Ukraine’s eastern provinces.

The Biden administration, leading the coalition of allies supplying Ukraine with weapons, is still holding back American-made M1 Abrams tanks, which require constant upkeep and which officials say are too scarce to spare.