Not so wild: This is how the Kremlin reacted to the reports that Germany and the United States wanted to deliver tanks to Ukraine or have them delivered by third parties.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was asked about the American Abrams tanks on Monday.

The idea of ​​supplying such tanks is "absurd" and such plans are doomed to fail, Peskov said, seeing a "significant overestimation of the potential" of such tanks for the Ukrainian armed forces.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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In the past few days, Russian state television has been saying that the "Abrams" tanks are too heavy, too expensive, too complicated and not suitable for snowy terrain.

This account seeks to reinforce Putin's words about the "inevitable" Russian victory in Ukraine.

Peskow, who otherwise uses dry, bureaucratic language, chooses drastic words with regard to the tanks.

Already on Monday last week, with a view to possible deliveries of various western tanks to Kyiv, he issued the motto that "these tanks are burning and will burn like the others".

On Wednesday he repeated: "These tanks will burn like all the others." Only the western tanks are expensive and European taxpayers will have to pay for them.

Peskow had already said on Tuesday that German tank deliveries meant "no good" for bilateral relations, which are already "at a pretty low point".

Western politicians puzzle over "red lines"

Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Defense Committee of the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, made a similar statement on Wednesday morning.

The deliveries of the German tanks would "change nothing fundamental," said Kartapolov on state television.

There is only a danger if the tanks do not simply appear on the battlefield, but if new units and formations of the Ukrainian armed forces are being prepared, for example in Poland or western Ukraine, and then "appear sometime in the spring, maybe closer to the summer".

Kartapolov said that the more new military technology that reaches Ukraine, the more supply and maintenance problems arise.

The German Leopard tanks are "not bad," he continued.

But if you compare them to the Russian T-90 tanks, they are much weaker in terms of firepower and armor.

In addition, state television quoted Western media that it would still take a while for delivery.

Elsewhere, reference was made to Putin's "red lines".

Western politicians have been puzzling for a long time - and not just since the attack at the end of February 2022 - at what point in support for Kyiv Russia's rulers think such "lines" have been crossed and what consequences this could have.

Putin has drawn different “red lines” at different times.

Sometimes Ukraine's NATO membership was considered such, sometimes Ukraine's rapprochement with the EU.

In 2021, an alleged "military appropriation" of Ukraine by NATO, joint maneuvers and deliveries of "light" weapons such as shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles were presented as essential threats to Russia.

Threats from the Kiev leadership to residents of the pro-Russian “People's Republics” in Donbass should be another of Putin's “red lines”.

Even Putin's own staff cannot be certain of the status of his "red lines."

Russian ambassador: "Very dangerous"

In an interview conducted in English, Russia's First Deputy Representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, said that the West had already "crossed all the red lines" and hadn't even noticed it.

When asked what the implication was, Polyansky relented, saying Moscow was "sending more and more signals to the West that some red lines have been crossed, but perhaps the reddest of them have not yet been crossed."

It came across as awkward and perplexed, even though Polyansky added the usual threat that when dealing with a nuclear power like Russia, one had to "consider all the possibilities" before "escalating more and more."

Russia's Foreign Ministry pointed out that "discussing red lines is a thing of the past".

Because the United States had declared that it was about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.

The Russian embassy in Berlin also emphasized that "red lines" were a thing of the past.

The German decision on the tanks was "very dangerous" and "takes the conflict to a new level".

Meanwhile, hackers from a group called "Killnet" announced an asymmetrical retaliation against Germany on Wednesday: They called for a major cyber attack on government agencies, banks and airports in Germany.

The hackers justified this on their Telegram channel with the reports on the deliveries of the tanks.

Peskov said it was not known what kind of group it was and why it was associated with Russia.