Today, Bundestag failed to vote for supplying Ukraine with German tanks and armored vehicles. It's a blow to Ukraine, again. I know many Germans wonder why we call on Germany specifically? Simple explanation: because it is either German or American tanks and armored vehicles /1
(infantry fighting vehicles) which may be theoretically available for Ukraine en masse. Ukraine needs massive scale weapons supply, not this piece-by-piece ''zoo'' park of various types of equipment - it's logistical nightmare to sustain. Currently, Ukraine is inferior /2
to Russia in all types of equipment: 1,5 times in tanks, and 5 times in armored vehicles:
https://twitter.com/Volodymyr_D_/status/1567635763323453447/3
Ukraine has been supplied with various modifications of Soviet T-72 tank from Poland, Czech rep. etc., and captured quite a lot of Russian tanks:
https://twitter.com/Volodymyr_D_/status/1573260370961223681/4
Would anyone say T-72 is less deadly or less escalational than Leopard 2? It is nonsense. Ukraine could be well off to continue with Soviet types of tanks - the problem is that there is no sufficient number of them anymore to match Ukrainian need. /5
How many tanks are needed? Ukrainian chief military commander V.Zaluzhny wrote that liberating currently occupied territories requires additional striking force of 10 - 20 combined arms brigades: ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/356… / 6
That means 800 - 900 tanks are needed, and 1500 - 3000 armored vehicles. So, the need for tanks is huge - not couple of dozens, but many many hundreds of them. In practical terms, in so massive quantities, it is only either US-made Abrams or German-made Leopard-2 to be chosen /7
US-made Abrams seems more demanding technically, because of specific engine and gas needed, etc. Leopard 2 may be easier for Ukrainians to use and maintain. That's why it's all about Germany. Well, actually, not only - Leopard 2 is in stock in many countries, and that would be /8
ideal solution to get a big number of Leopards 2 from various countries. But any such supply would again require German producer's consent - as it was in the case of Spain already, Germany refused to authorize Spanish Leopards 2 to Ukraine. /9
Now, with armored vehicles, it's even bigger nonsense. Germany has already provided so many deadly weapons (MLRS, PzH2000 - btw, on Leopard 2 chassis, etc.), but it refuses to provide Marders - infantry fighting vehicles - a light-armored vehicles with small 20-mm cannon. /10
These infantry fighting vehicles are not tanks at all, but somehow German politicians count them as 'Panzer' :-(. Totally irrational nonsense. Why Germany here again? Because it's either US-made Bradley or Germany-made Marder to choose from, in such quantities needed /11
- as mentioned above, the need is for thousands of such vehicles. So, it's up to Germany to decide whether all those talks about European responsibility for European security really have any meaning, or again Europe can't do anything without Americans. /12
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