An assembly of Western defense officials ended without Germany agreeing to send tanks to Ukraine, but an influx of other armored vehicles has set the stage for an impending clash of Russian and Ukrainian forces.
“To be honest, the probability that they win or they lose is 50-50,” a senior German military official told the Washington Examiner while discussing an expected Russian offensive this spring. “The more the Ukrainians can continue to mobilize their forces and we continue to equip them ... the higher the probability that the Russian offensive fails and the more likely it becomes that Ukraine seizes more of its terrain than they have seized and reconquered currently.
“They will try to make a breakthrough somewhere, and to counter this breakthrough, you have to be mobile, you have to be active, you have to be protected, and that only works when you have your own armored fighting vehicles and tanks,” the senior German military official said. “If you are in trenches and they manage to make a breakthrough at some point, how can you stop them? ... You can't run with [Ukrainian] infantry behind [Russian] armor.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made the tanks a centerpiece of his appeal for more aid in recent months, but he adopted an optimistic posture about the other heavy weapons on offer. “It’s not the end of the world if Scholz says no to Leopards because there’s a whole lot of armor coming in,” said former Ambassador Bill Taylor."These infantry fighting vehicles, those are capable weapons ... and the Ukrainians will use them very well. They'll use them like tanks. So Scholz is not the bottom line.”
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