M1 Abrams tanks and other armored vehicles sit atop flat cars in a rail yard after U.S. President Donald Trump said tanks and other military hardware could be a part of Fourth of July displays of military prowess in Washington, U.S., July 2, 2019.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Russia expressed mounting fury on the prospect of recent Western tanks being sent to Ukraine, calling it “extremely dangerous” and saying previous “red lines” were now a thing of the past.
Germany announced earlier Wednesday that it was able to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and to permit other countries with the identical German-made tanks to send their equipment to Kyiv. The U.S. can also be expected to announce its own intention to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine imminently.
The use of recent Western tanks by Ukraine is prone to add momentum to its efforts to push Russian forces out of occupied areas of the country, particularly the eastern Donbas region, but Russia sees the gift of tanks as further evidence that the West is fighting what it sees as a proxy war against it in Ukraine.
‘Extremely dangerous’
The Russian Embassy in Berlin called the German government’s decision “extremely dangerous” and said it “takes the conflict to a latest level of confrontation.”
In a press release online, translated by Google, it said the move “contradicts the statements of German politicians in regards to the unwillingness of the FRG to be drawn into it. Unfortunately, this happens over and yet again.”
The embassy said it was now convinced that Germany and its closest allies were “not keen on a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis, it is about up for its everlasting escalation and unlimited pumping of the Kyiv regime with increasingly deadly weapons.”
Lastly, it warned that “red lines,” or limits, for each side were now “a thing of the past,” echoing similar comments from Russia’s foreign ministry earlier Wednesday because it reacted to the prospect of U.S. Abrams tanks being sent to Ukraine, claiming the U.S. “has unequivocally stated its desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.”
“There may be a hybrid war occurring against our country, which Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov spoke about intimately only recently. Arguments in regards to the red lines are a thing of the past,” the foreign ministry told state news agency Tass, in comments translated by Google.
“The USA has unequivocally stated its desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. It’s unimaginable not to note the fact,” the ministry added, Tass reported.
Following Germany’s decision on tanks, all eyes are on the U.S. to see whether it can announce it’s able to send quite a few its own Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Three senior U.S. officials told NBC News Tuesday that the Biden administration is preparing to send a pair dozen Abrams tanks to Ukraine although they stressed the choice was not final.
Germany was reportedly reluctant to send its own tanks unless the U.S. did the identical, and a defense summit in Germany last Friday failed to succeed in an agreement over tanks, with the U.S. remaining non-committal about sending Abrams. But Germany’s U-turn signals a change of heart in Washington too.
Even within the absence of a White House announcement, Russia’s Ambassador to the USA Anatoly Antonov slammed the prospect of U.S. tanks in Ukraine, describing the move as “one other blatant provocation against the Russian Federation.”
“If the USA decides to produce tanks, it can be unimaginable to justify such step using arguments about ‘defensive weapons,'” he said on Telegram Wednesday, adding that American tanks could be “destroyed [just like] all other samples of NATO military equipment.”
‘Absurd’ and a ‘failure’
Russia has repeatedly warned the West against sending tanks to Ukraine, saying they’d be a legitimate goal for Russia’s armed forces, like other NATO weaponry, and would make any prospect of talks to finish the war a fair more distant possibility.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov commented at a media briefing Wednesday that “now we will only state that there are currently no prospects for entering the diplomatic path.”
“Unfortunately, we see numerous manifestations of the conviction of quite a few politicians, quite a few experts, the military and so forth, who imagine that it’s by continuing the war that the safety of the continent could be ensured. That is an absurd belief,” Peskov said in comments translated by NBC News.
Asked about the potential for U.S. Abrams being sent to Ukraine, Peskov told reporters, “I’m convinced that many experts understand the absurdity of this concept too. It’s just that, when it comes to technological facets, this plan is kind of a failure, and most significantly, it’s a transparent overestimation of the potential that it can add to the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he said.
“But we have now already said that these tanks would burn up identical to all of the others,” Peskov said.
