Poland and Britain weigh sending battle tanks to Kyiv
Poland and Britain are considering sending main battle tanks to Ukraine, a move that would end the West’s nearly yearlong refusal to deploy some of its most advanced weaponry against Russia and ratchet up pressure on other allies of Kyiv to follow suit.
Warsaw and London have yet to finalize such a move, but doing so would meet a demand Kyiv has been making almost since the start of the war and support potential offensives against Russian forces in the coming months. Poland would require a signoff from Berlin to send its German-made tanks.
Defense officials in the United States and Europe have long held concerns that giving Ukraine tanks would signal more direct Western involvement in the war and could prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin into escalation.
On Wednesday, the president of Poland said that his country was prepared to send German-made Leopard II tanks to Ukraine if an “international coalition” agreed to do so. No such Western-made battle tanks have been sent to Ukraine since the invasion.
Poland had already decided to include the Leopards as part of a package from the coalition, President Andrzej Duda said, speaking at a joint news conference in Lviv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania. Duda added that he hoped the tanks would “soon flow through various routes to Ukraine.”
Duda did not specify which countries might be involved in such a coalition. But Polish officials have urged Western nations several times this week to band together and jointly send more modern tanks to bolster Ukraine’s diminishing supply of Soviet-era tanks.
Germany has long resisted sending Ukraine offensive weaponry out of concerns about escalating the war and said it would not be the first NATO ally to send tanks. And, out of ethical concerns, Germany places limits on its vast, lucrative arms exports and their reexport, so its agreement is required for Poland or any other country to send Ukraine the German-made Leopards.
Zelensky said Wednesday that Ukraine expected a “joint decision” on the transfer of the tanks and that it would take donations from several countries to meet the needs of Ukrainian forces. “One state cannot help us with Leopards, because we are fighting against thousands of tanks of the Russian Federation,” he said.
The mounting pressure on Berlin comes a day after Britain said it was considering sending Challenger II tanks. No decision has yet been made on whether the Challenger II tanks — reportedly as few as 10 — will be donated to Ukraine.