Washington CNN —
The Biden administration is in a standoff with Germany over whether to send tanks to Ukraine ahead of a key meeting of Western defense leaders in Germany on Friday.
In recent days, German officials have indicated they will not send their Leopard tanks to Ukraine or allow any other country with German-made tanks in their inventory unless the US agrees to ship their M1 Abrams Sending tanks to Kyiv — something the Pentagon has said for months it has no intention of doing given the logistical costs of maintaining it.
“They overwhelmed us,” a senior Biden administration official told CNN on Thursday, adding that the Germans are demanding tank after tank and are not backing down to considering other US offers to goad Berlin to send the Leopards .
The anti-tank defense comes amid a much larger debate between the US and its European allies over whether to send increasingly sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, including long-range missiles that would allow Ukraine to hit targets up to 200 miles away.
The UK, Poland, Finland and the Baltic states have all pushed for NATO members to ship heavier equipment to Kyiv in what they say is a major turning point in the war. Both Ukraine and Russia appear to be preparing for fresh offensives, and there are signs Moscow may be preparing for additional troop mobilizations.
Last week, the British increased the pressure on their western allies when they announced they were sending 14 of their Challenger tanks to Ukraine. But Germany and the USA were still opposed to sending their own tanks until Wednesday.
Berlin then dragged the Biden administration deeper into the stalemate, suggesting that its supply of tanks was conditional on the US doing the same.
“If America decides to bring main battle tanks to Ukraine, it will be easier for Germany,” German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck told Bloomberg from Davos on Tuesday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a similar statement on Wednesday in Davos after the delivery of tanks to Ukraine. especially the United States.”
A Western official explained that for Scholz, the tank issue was “a red, red, red line. German tanks [fighting] Russia again. moral matter. Understandable from a historical perspective. Speaking of moral burden: I wish the Germans were more sympathetic to Poland today. Let alone with Ukraine. Didn’t German tanks kill Ukrainians 80 years ago? Now they can defend them from barbaric Russian aggression.”
Ahead of a meeting Thursday in Berlin between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his German counterpart, a senior US defense official said the US is “very optimistic that we will make progress on the tank issue.”
But not everyone in the US government shares this optimism. A number of senior government officials have privately expressed frustration with German officials for making what the US believes to be an incorrect equation between American and German tanks.
“It’s silly,” a senior administration official said of the German demand for American tanks alongside German ones. “It’s like they think they’re the same and they’re not. It doesn’t feel like they understand the difference.”
US officials familiar with the situation told CNN on Thursday the tank issue was still undecided ahead of Friday’s meeting and it would be surprising if Germany changed its mind despite Austin’s private pressure campaign.
“I think if there was concern about being alone in delivering this capability, it shouldn’t be an issue, but at the end of the day the German government will make a sovereign decision,” Undersecretary for Defense Policy Colin Kahl said Wednesday.
In some corners, pressure is mounting that the US will go ahead and send Abrams tanks just to get the Germans on board.
“Scholz wants to be in step with the US,” MP Seth Moulton told CNN after speaking with Scholz about the matter in Davos this week. “I think the US should give some tanks if that’s what Germany needs. That’s called leadership.”
On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki suggested that Warsaw could ignore any restrictions Germany wants to impose on Poland’s exports of its supplies of German-made tanks.
“Consent is secondary. Either we get that approval or we do what needs to be done ourselves,” said Morawiecki. “Germany is the least proactive country out of the group, to put it mildly. We will continue to put pressure on the chancellor.”
This all comes as the US on Thursday announced a new $2.5 billion security package for Ukraine that includes Stryker fighting vehicles and more heavily armored Bradley fighting vehicles for the first time.
The package doesn’t include M1 Abrams tanks, however, and the US is unlikely to provide them any time soon because they are difficult and expensive to supply and maintain, US officials said.
“One of the things that Secretary Austin has been very focused on is that we shouldn’t be giving Ukrainians systems that they can’t fix, that they can’t maintain and that they can’t afford in the long run because it can’t.” is helpful,” Kahl said on Wednesday. “And this is not about a news cycle or anything that has symbolic value, but about what will actually help Ukraine on the battlefield.”
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh threw more cold water on the German demand on Thursday, telling reporters that deploying the Abrams tanks “makes no sense.”
Singh called Leopards the better option for Ukraine.
“It’s a bit easier to maintain, they can maneuver over large parts of the territory before they need to refuel. The maintenance and high cost that it would require to service an Abrams is easy – it just doesn’t make sense to provide that to the Ukrainians [Abrams tanks] this moment.”
Western tanks would represent the most powerful direct offensive weapon yet made available to Ukraine, and if used properly could allow Ukraine to retake territory against Russian forces that have had time to dig defensive lines. The US has started supplying outdated Soviet-era T-72 tanks, but modern Western tanks are a generation ahead in terms of their ability to engage enemy positions.
Ukrainian officials have said they will need around 300 of these modern tanks to push back the Russians, and the European Council on Foreign Relations estimates there are around 2,000 Leopard tanks spread across Europe.
“We welcome the UK’s bold and very timely decision to deploy the first squadron of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a joint statement on Thursday. “However, it is not enough to achieve operational goals.”
Appealing to countries with Leopard 2 tanks in their inventory, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey, Ukrainian ministers vowed to “use these weapons responsibly and solely for the purpose of protecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders.”
The debate among allies over how far Ukraine’s arms build should go, particularly as it relates to long-range missiles, reflects a broader disagreement over the risks of escalation between NATO and Russia.
To this day, the US refuses to send long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine over fears that they could be used to attack targets in Russia. But in line with London’s more forward-looking stance on military support to Ukraine, some British officials have expressed openness to the delivery of longer-range systems, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The US is currently opposed to the idea.
“Regarding the ATACMS issue, I think we’re kind of on the ‘agree, disagree’ position,” Kahl told reporters Wednesday.
Ukrainian officials, noting the more aggressive public stance by the British, have asked Britain to take a greater leadership role at Friday’s meeting, people familiar with their demands told CNN. They also want British officials to be more aggressive in informing allied foreign and defense ministers about what Ukrainians believe are the operational realities of the war – and what they need to do to win it.
These discussions are taking place in silence because the UK has traditionally not wanted to give the impression that it is at odds with its allies. But there are signs that London is increasingly ready to publicly break with the US, most recently by announcing it would be supplying tanks to Ukraine.
Ahead of his visit to Washington this week, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also opined that “now is the time to speed up and go further and faster to give Ukraine the support it needs.” .
“This war has been going on for a long time. And now it’s time to bring it to a conclusion,” Cleverly added Wednesday, speaking to CNN at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also joined the fray on Wednesday and called on the Allies to deliver “heavier” and more modern weapons.
“The main message [at Ramstein] will be more support and more advanced support, heavier weapons and more modern weaponry,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the NATO Defense Leaders Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base on Friday. “Because this is a fight for our values, a fight for democracy and we just have to prove that democracy defeats tyranny and oppression.”