25 January 2023
After being highly critical of Olaf Scholz's - er - Scholzing over the Leopards, I welcome this decision wholeheartedly. Deploying some of Germany's formidable military kit to push back Putin's aggression is historically, morally, strategically and politically the right thing to do.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64391272
Militarily, the US Abrams tanks only complicate the effort. A consistent, interoperable force of European Leopards would operationally be the best way forward. And there is a real worry that they won't get there soon enough to stop a new Russian offensive & allow Ukrainian counter-offensive
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-64408504
There is then a danger of what might be called an +escalating stalemate+. (Think World War I.) The only good way forward is to enable Ukraine to make a decisive breakthrough, and then negotiate peace from a position of strength.
A sober note on what is needed to make the tanks effective here:
https://www.ft.com/content/7a545cda-3dd8-408d-b676-0977d0b204db?shareType=nongift
PS A propos 'Scholzing' (which, btw, pace @ZDF Was nun? presenter, is not my invention – a Ukrainian friend sent me the meme, I found it amusing and satirically apt, so tweeted it), Scholz himself here reinterprets it as 'Germany does the most'. If only that were true. In fact, of course, it's still the US.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/zdfheute-live/scholz-waffenlieferung-ukraine-video-100.html
adapted from @fromTGA
iis your commentary so naive about the Russian's answer? you know the extraordinary symbolisms of seeing a German tank in Ukrainian territory. And I do not think that Zelensky will use the tanks against the Russians. Maybe in the black market economy.