The tanks that have been promised to Ukraine just aren’t coming. That’s the gist of a report published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, at least. According to that report, European allies are reluctant to make good on earlier signals despite intense lobbying from Berlin in recent days. This is raising doubt that enough tanks can arrive in Ukraine in time for an expected Russian offensive. It is also leaving Germany’s government in an awkward position it has sought to avoid: becoming the sole purveyor of a large contingent of Western-made main battle tanks for Ukraine. Europe’s sudden misgivings about supplying Ukraine with tanks reveal that, as with ammunition and heavy artillery, North Atlantic Treaty Organization members in the region have fewer operational tanks that they can spare, the Journal says.
Britain and France, which have the biggest armed forces among European NATO allies, have around 220 tanks each, but it is unclear how many are actually battle-ready, according to GlobalFirepower, an online database. Germany has a similar number of tanks, with government surveys showing that less than half of them can be deployed, because the rest are in need of repair. By contrast, Russia started the war with over 12,000 tanks, while Ukraine had nearly 2,000.
So far, only Germany and Poland have approved substantial deliveries of tanks for Kiev—around 200 and 74 (Poland gave Ukraine about 250 old Soviet-era T-72s last summer—ed.), respectively, including a mixture of new and older models. Canada has committed 4 modern German-made tanks.
