Arms delivery to Ukraine: where there's a will, there's a tank

If you believe the Vice Chancellor, then the Ukrainians can not only be happy about finally getting the marten delivered from Germany.

According to Habeck's most recent statement, the Leopard main battle tank should immediately follow the aged infantry fighting vehicle: "We will always adapt our deliveries to the needs on the battlefield."

Not even former green pacifists believe that the Ukrainians don't need battle tanks to liberate the occupied territories.

But the marten is not a leopard.

It can support it in battles against infantry, but cannot replace it in battles against enemy main battle tanks.

Of course, the Ukrainians have known for a long time that not every word from Berlin should be taken at face value.

And that you still need time there to get used to ideas that were considered unthinkable in the coalition parties until February 24 last year.

In his speech at the turn of the century, Chancellor Scholz also broke with the line of not delivering weapons to war zones.

Berlin was not alone in hesitating

But the convictions in the parties and apparatuses behind this decades-old restraint did not disappear overnight, as the discussions about “offensive” and “defensive weapons” or light and heavy tanks revealed.

The German arms deliveries to the Ukraine were never based solely on what the Ukraine needed on the battlefield, although there were repeated statements like Habeck's in Berlin.

Otherwise they would have had to deliver the anti-aircraft tanks, the anti-tank howitzers and the Marder last spring, which they have received in the meantime or are about to receive.

The reluctance to make large weapon systems available to the Ukraine and to train its soldiers on them was not only observed in Germany.

To date, no western state has provided Kyiv with modern battle tanks, combat aircraft or long-range surface-to-surface missiles.

There is no direct justification for this.

Howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, air defense systems and, after ten months of refusal, now also infantry fighting vehicles from our own production yes, but battle tanks and fighter-bombers still not?

NATO does not want to become a party to the war.

But what does she want?

You have to read the reason for this from a sentence that the Federal Chancellor utters again and again: NATO does not want to become a party to the war.

But what does she want?

It wants to increase the military pressure on Putin by means of - dosed - arms deliveries so that he ends his terrorist war of annihilation.

But the West does not want Ukraine to inflict a humiliating defeat on Putin that would endanger his regime.

The Western state chancellery fears that the only way out would be to escalate the (nuclear) war or aggression against NATO countries.

Both seem rather unlikely.

But in Putin's case, as the attack on Ukraine shows, one has to reckon with decisions that appear irrational from a Western perspective.

However, the course of caution has its price.

The Ukrainians pay the highest price, more death and destruction every day.

If the West shows fear of Putin's threats, this not only increases the likelihood of this campaign being extended, but also increases the risk of a repeat elsewhere.

Blackmail or even conquest of other states is the last business model left to the Russian dictator.

The West's grandiose declarations of support for the Ukrainians' struggle for their freedom and even their very existence must therefore be followed by appropriate actions for the sake of their own credibility.

Ukraine needs main battle tanks - not only in the distant future

Anyone who doesn't want to one day have to defend the values ​​of the West with their own troops, which – one hears this again and again in Berlin – is now being defended by the Ukrainians, must give them the necessary weapons to do so.

And not only in the distant future.

The Ukrainian advance has come to a standstill.

A major Russian offensive threatens in the spring.

The Ukrainian army needs battle tanks to defend them and to liberate other areas.

Ten months of war have reduced their stocks.

The Bundeswehr has too few Leopards to be able to sell a significant number of them.

Things are no better for the French army and the Leclerc.

But in the backyards of the German armaments forges there are still dozens of older Leopards.

And in the American depots there are plenty of mothballed Abrams.

The delivery of the German, French and American tanks that has now been announced shows that where there's a will, there's a tank.

Ukrainians would even be grateful for the Puma.