Let me tell you the real effects of sending Western tanks to Ukraine
From a military point of view, the decision to supply a couple of tank battalions to Ukraine does not change the balance of power in Ukraine in the short to medium term. Instead, it has positive effects on the morale of Ukrainian troops. So the news has more political than military consequences . General Carlo Jean's analysis
After long and often harsh pressure from the United States and several of its European allies – especially from Poland and the Baltic and Scandinavian states – Berlin has agreed to send Leopard-2 A6 tanks to Ukraine . Germany will give Kiev 14 wagons and will authorize the sending of around 80 to the Ukrainians by a dozen countries which had imported them from Germany and which need its authorization to re-export them.
Chancellor Scholz made the German assent conditional on the US decision to supply Ukraine with their M1 Abrams tanks. Biden bowed and decided to send 31. While the Leopards will be available within one to two months, i.e. for the announced spring offensive, the Abrams will only be available at the end of the summer. Scholz's hesitations stemmed from the fact that he judged a unilateral supply of modern tanks by Germany negative for relations with Russia after the end of the conflict in Ukraine. In my opinion, he did not consider it dangerous for an escalation of the conflict, but for the future and not to give the sensation of a policy of expansion of Germany towards East.
As in the tradition of a part of German geopolitics, starting with Bismark and the SDP, with its Ostpolitik, Scholz deems it necessary to have good relations with Russia. It had to give in to US and European pressure because Germany depends on NATO for its security and because, with its rearmament, Berlin wants to assume the political-strategic leadership in Europe. The change underway is not understood by those who wish to renounce the increase in military spending and capabilities in Italy. He did not realize that military force has once again become a determining factor in geopolitics.
THE REACTION OF RUSSIA AND THE CRAZY THESIS OF THE PRO-PUTINIAN ANALYST
As expected, Berlin's decision provoked vehement protests from Moscow. Initially, the Kremlin's reaction was to threaten the use of nuclear power – already used several times. Then, considering that no one believes it anymore – he changed his communication strategy, mocking the small number of carts given to Ukraine and stating that they will not change the situation and that they would be "burned" in Ukraine.
Only the self-proclaimed Western strategic analysts, who await the Kremlin's cue to back up its position, believed the first version. In Italy, loud laments have been raised about the inevitability of an escalation. The funniest theses have been produced, such as the fact that the Leopards changed the balance of power given that a projectile – maximum anti-tank – from their 120 mm cannon could destroy a house 4 km away, or that, faced with the hesitation to send tanks, planes should have been supplied to Ukraine: these would have caused a qualitative leap in the conflict, being able to hit Moscow (apart from ignoring the modest effects obtained by western planes in Kosovo, which had destroyed an irrelevant number of assets of the Serbian III Army Corps, as I was personally able to detect being responsible for the OSCE for the counting of the weapons foreseen by Dayton). They are nonsense, indexes of technical knowledge perhaps drawn from Mickey Mouse !
THE MILITARY CONSEQUENCES OF SENDING MODERN TANKS TO UKRAINE
However, the impacts of supplying modern tanks to Ukraine are not irrelevant: they are twofold: on the one hand, they are strictly strategic and military; on the other hand, they are politicians.
From a military point of view, the decision to supply a couple of tank battalions to Ukraine does not significantly change the balance of power in Ukraine in the short to medium term. Instead, it has positive effects on the morale of the Ukrainian troops, who were beginning to doubt the solidity of the Western commitment to continue supporting them.
Perhaps the US decision – taken by Biden and Blinken against the Pentagon's opinion, against sending the Abrams for reasons of logistical support and availability (the Abrams have a turbine engine, difficult to keep efficient and will only be available in six to seven months) – is motivated by the ideas recently expressed in the State Department on Ukraine's post-conflict security. In other words, that it should be guaranteed with a powerful rearmament of Kiev, not with a guarantee from the West, much more difficult for Russia to "digest", since it would in any case appear to be an extension of NATO. US diplomacy is certainly at work both in Kiev and in Moscow to explore the feasibility of such a solution. Speaking of negotiations instead of weapons, Western pacifists do not propose anything concrete, except to say that "God does not want" and that "weapons hurt".
In any case, sending a hundred tanks to Ukraine cannot solve the problem. It's okay that the Leopard-2s are superior to Russian tanks, even the very recent T 90-M, but numbers matter. According to the Military Balance , as of 2021 Ukraine had about 900 tanks operational and a couple thousand more in storage, possibly rusting. It also received about 500 ex-Soviet tanks from various ex-Warsaw Pact members. Finally, he captured from the Russian forces, mainly north of Kiev and south of Kharkiv, several hundred still serviceable tanks. Even assuming that a thousand of his tanks were destroyed, he would be left with at least another thousand, perhaps a couple of thousand of these.
Even if shipments from the West reached two hundred tanks, such as to form two armored brigades, they would be too few to be able to transform the current war of attrition – which, given its quantitative superiority, Russia is destined to win – into a maneuver, in which the Ukrainians would have a better chance of success and of reconquering the lost territories. They could also repel the powerful spring offensive that the "Clausewitzian" General Gerasimov, now in charge of operations in the Ukraine, is preparing. It does this by wearing down the best Ukrainian units in the strategically irrelevant Bakhmut area. It employs troops from the Wagner Group in waves, four fifths of which are ex-convicts. They suffer significant losses. At worst, the Kremlin thus solves the prison problem in Russia and, in its own way, also the fight against crime!
THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES
From a political point of view, the sending of NATO tanks is instead very important. It demonstrated the steadfastness of the coalition of "Friends of Ukraine". The Kremlin's success rests on the hope of its division. Only it, and the subsequent suspension of military support to Ukraine, can make it possible for Putin to achieve his goals.
This also explains why Russian reactions to sending tanks have changed. Noting that the tanks will now be sent, in order not to depress the morale of its troops, Moscow's propaganda is folded on the affirmation that nothing has changed and that the "great patriotic army" will easily destroy even the tanks that the "bad" The West will give to Ukraine, by now manipulated in its desire to oppose "brotherly" Russia, which only wants to free it from Nazism and its manipulations financed by the West.
The German/American decision showed Moscow that the West is united. Even if the new weapons won't allow Ukraine to move from a war of attrition to a maneuver one, a victory on the Russian field becomes more difficult. Everyone considers Moscow's threats a bluff. The conflict in Ukraine runs the risk of continuing for a long time to come, with no losers or winners, even without the possibility of a negotiated solution. It will likely turn into a “frozen conflict” like Korea. Security guarantees for Ukraine will become central to its transformation. They will occupy the central place, now reserved for territorial aspects.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/carri-armati-occidentali-ucraina-conseguenze/ on Fri, 27 Jan 2023 07:49:13 +0000.