According to Aljazeera, “The United States and Germany have pledged to send state-of-the-art battle tanks to Ukraine, paving the way for several of its European allies to follow suit. The moves, announced by President Joe Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, will see Washington deploy 31 Abrams tanks while Berlin will supply Kyiv with 14 German-made Leopard 2 units at first.” Holysh*t! Thirty-one whole tanks from America alone. Add to that 14 tanks from Germany, 14 from the U.K., 14 from Poland, and an untold number from Finland, Norway, Spain, and Netherlands. That brings the total to no fewer than 73 tanks! I am so excited by this game-changer that I can hardly stand it! Not!
Aljazeera further reports, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has requested 300 tanks to help push back Russia’s invasion forces. Moscow said Western-supplied tanks will ‘burn’ and dismissed suggestions they will impact the outcome of the nearly yearlong conflict.” So, what does all this mean? The West is failing Ukraine, of course! Plain and simple. Not only is the West refusing to send the necessary number of tanks to actually help Ukraine win the war, but what they are promising to send may be too late at this point. I heard the Biden administration suggest that it could take at least six months and up to a year to get the Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Really? Six months to a year!
I thought part of the reason the U.S. changed course on providing tanks was to counter the impending offensive for Russia expected this Spring. (I guess it was also partly to break the log jam with Germany and other countries sending tanks of their own.) Nonetheless, and once again, this is the West helping Ukraine too little, too late because the West refuses to understand the threat that is Russia fully. Whatever! At this rate, Putin’s plan to slowly wear down Ukraine and the Western alliance seems to be working — slowly but surely. The West still has one foot in and one foot out of committing to help Ukraine. This is more cooperation and coordination than Putin had expected, but he understands that this is the high water mark for the West, so their level of commitment will only weaken. Russia may be losing on the battlefield, but they have tens of millions of people to use as fodder, so Putin only needs to wait for Western democracies to lose their attention because that’s what we do — get bored, take our eyes off the prize, and become complacent. This seems to be a natural by-product of an easy life that democracies engender. Well, it’s all fun and games until you suddenly find yourself fighting for your life in a dictatorship. Oh, well. Humanity is stupid! But I digress. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.