“I had a long conversation with Scholz, Macron, Sunak and Meloni. We are united in our support for Ukraine.” Joe Biden said it in the White House. “In all this there is no threat to Russia.” Joe Biden said so at the White House when he announced the deployment of Abrams tanks to Kyiv. “We are helping Ukraine to defend itself,” stressed the US President, “ours is not an offensive against Russia.” Biden confirms sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine on Pentagon recommendation. The US and Europe are “fully united in supporting Ukraine,” despite Russia expecting “we would part ways.”
The US President clarifies that “Germany has not forced me to change my mind” regarding tanks and that training of the Kiev Armed Forces on the new tanks “will start soon”.
“Russian troops – he concluded – must return to where they belong, to Russia. This war could end today, we all want that: the end of the war.”
The 31 tanks that the United States decided to send to Ukraine will be made from scratch by General Dynamics Land Systems, the company that makes the extremely powerful tanks. This was reported by senior US officials in a briefing with a small number of journalists. This means that the tanks for the Kiev Armed Forces are not taken from US stockpiles and “take months” to arrive at their destination.
STATEMENT BY JOE BIDEN
Western tanks “will be crucial to our future victory”, says the Ukrainian Presidency.
Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergey Nechaev He says the German decision is “highly dangerous” and “takes the conflict to a new level”. For the ambassador quoted by Tass, the decision destroys “whatever mutual trust remains, irreparably damages relations with Berlin” and shows “Germany’s complete refusal to recognize historical responsibility” for the Nazi crimes.
“We act in a closely coordinated and internationally coordinated manner,” explained Scholz. And while Poland thanked Berlin for the decision to send tanks to Ukraine, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a tweet that “the decision by NATO allies and friends to send tanks to Ukraine is correct.” And he stressed that together with the British Challenger 2, they will “bolster defensive firepower.”
The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi said he was ‘sincerely grateful’ for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to send “German tanks to Ukraine”, but also for the “further expansion of defense support and for training missions” and “the green light for partners to supply similar weapons”. Zelenskyy – he adds on Twitter – he found out “about these important and timely decisions in a phone call with Scholz”.
Ukraine welcomes ‘first step’ of the German go-ahead for Leopard tanks, also announced the Presidium office from Kyiv. And Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to President Zelenskyy, considers that “an internal escalation of the war in Russia is inevitable. And different attacks are carried out against different targets”. In an interview with blogger Michael Nucky, quoted by UNIAN, Podolyak emphasized that Ukrainian forces are not attacking Russia, but that Russians will be able to “feel the war” even in big cities. The Kremlin promptly responded, after which “Podolyak’s threats confirm that we are right”.
Kyiv has long relied on tanks To change the fate of a conflict now in its eleventh month, the subject of an unprecedented confrontation that risks undermining the cohesion of the Alliance. Moscow’s response had come earlier, with Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov saying the Russian military will destroy US-made M1 Abrams tanks and other NATO military equipment if they are shipped to Ukraine, he promised. according to tax reports. According to Antonov, Washington wants to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. And “an analysis of Washington’s entire sequence of actions shows that Americans are constantly raising the bar for military support for their puppet government.” According to the Moscow representative, “if the decision is made to move the M1 Abrams to Kyiv, like all other NATO military equipment, American tanks will undoubtedly be destroyed.”
ANSA agency
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova writes on Telegram that “Europe needs to wake up from its lethargic sleep because the United States is dragging it into a major war” (ANSA)
Then it was the Kremlin spokesman himself, Dmitry Peskovquoted by the Interfax agency to explain this the American Abrams tanks in Ukraine “will burn just like others”. “I am convinced that many specialists understand the absurdity” of sending tanks to Ukraine, Peskov said. “From a technological point of view – the spokesman added – this is a rather unsuccessful plan and, most importantly, a clear overestimation of the potential that will be added to the Ukrainian Armed Forces”. “All this – Peskow continued – will fall primarily on the shoulders of those who pay taxes in Europe, while the Americans, as always, at least will not suffer losses, but most likely will benefit.”
For his part, Russian President Putin has made a new charge: “American forces in Germany are occupying forcesin legal and effective terms”. And he reiterated that Russia cannot allow its historical territories to be threatened, adding that the main purpose of the military operation in Ukraine is to protect the people and Russia itself. The tax
