The battle of the tanks began in the government headquarters and in the heads of the European citizens. The hardest part occurred in the memory of the Germans and at the top of their government. To the much desired tanks leopardthe memory of the divisions of Panzer that entered the Ukraine and Russia in June 1941. Those powerful armored cannons displaced on tracks, whose full name was Panzerkampfwagen, were together with the Stuka planes the main weapon of the “Blitzkrieg” that Hitler launched against the Soviet Slavs, to incorporate much of Russia to its claimed Lebensraum (living space) of the Aryan race.
The endless caravans of Panzer paraded through the memory of millions of Germans since Volodymyr Zelensky began to demand from Berlin the delivery of Leopard tanks. The chancellor Olaf Schölz he juggled rhetorically avoiding the claims that came to him from kyiv, Washington, Warsaw and other European capitals. He even rehearsed what seemed like a discussion argument between teenagers, conditioning the shipment of that weapon to the fact that, first, the United States sent the M1 Abrams.
The formidable American tank is sophisticated and it will take time to train Ukrainian tankers, he replied. Washington in that push and pull. The first step was taken by London, by agreeing to send fourteen challengers, the heavy British tank. By this time, Paris too was beginning to drop the justification for denying the Ukraine its Leclerc tanks, saying it had too few of them and needed them for the defense of the French borders.
Finally, vehemently pushed by Polandthey all reluctantly agreed to send to Ukraine the tanks that are essential to get out of the quagmire of their intended reconquest of territories occupied by Russian troops.
But at that point, the discussion about the tanks had already revealed the abysmal doubts that paralyze the Western powers. The Euro-American axis wants to defeat Russia without confronting it directly, which is what Moscow is threatening if it NATO it supplies the Ukrainians with the offensive weapons it demands.
Everyone agrees to help Ukraine defend itself, but that defense is at a point where an offensive is forced. And an offensive requires tanks and armored vehicles. The Leopard tanks they are best suited to Ukraine’s military plans. Poland showed immediate readiness to send him all that it possesses if Berlin authorized it. But Chancellor Scholz he was hesitant, fearing that doing so would place Russia in the “co-belligerent” category and make her a target for its nuclear missiles.
It is possible that this will happen, because if, with the tank divisions that the Ukraine will be able to launch on the Russian positions in a couple of months, there is a withdrawal of the invading army in disbandments like the one seen in the recapture of Kharkov, the Kremlin it could carry out the devastating design that it has been announcing for some time.
Weapons have played critical roles in the early stages of this war. First there were the Javelin anti-tank missiles and the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, to slow the advance on kyiv. When the stage of recovering territories in the East was passed, the 155 mm howitzers and the Himars rocket launchers became relevant.
In the battles that are being fought in the south and those that will come if Ukraine tries to recover Mariupol and the coast of the Azov Sea, the bradley armored vehicles, which move on tracks, the Strykers, which have wheels, and the M113 troop carriers. But in this new phase, as well as in the alleged reconquest of the Donbas and the Crimea, the tanks that Zelenski demanded so much and that Germany and its allies took so long to agree to deliver are essential.
Russia grudgingly tolerated the NATO provide Ukraine with defensive weapons, but has long warned that if it is given weapons to go on the offensive, the Atlantic Alliance will go to direct war with Russia. At this point in the conflict, the issue is “what” it means to help Ukraine defend itself. Not giving him the weapons that would allow him to launch the reconquest of territories implies forcing him to accept the loss of that portion of the country. While giving him the necessary weapons implies stopping before the nuclear abyss with which the Kremlin threatens.
Over that abyss he warned Elon Musk. The founder of Tesla claims to be on the side of the invaded country to qualify his reasoning, always elliptically favorable to Moscow, but his statement about what the Ukrainian attempt to recover Crimea would imply seems to be closer to reality than the aspirations of Zelensky.
No leader of the powers that are helping Ukraine, tells the Ukrainian president something that at this point seems obvious: Ukraine must accept that it is impossible to recover all of its territory now occupied by the invading forces. And the greatest example of the unrecoverable is crimea.
If the Ukrainian army did not go for the recapture of the peninsula in 2014, when it was occupied and annexed by Russia, it cannot aspire to recover it now. If Putin were overthrown or assassinated by an internal conspiracy, the reality would be different. But in the current reality, kyiv can aspire to the recovery of Mariupol and its coast on the Sea of Azov, and also of large extensions of territories to the East of the Dnieper River. But you must accept that at least parts of Doniestk, Luhansk and Crimeaare on the Russian map.
Without this alteration of the pre-existing maps, it is impossible for there to be an end to the conflict that does not imply a nuclear cataclysm. If Russia were on the verge of losing everything it had invaded, the nuclear threats that Russian hierarchs such as the number two of the Security Council, Dimitri Medvedev, have been repeating.
It is not easy for kyiv to give up territories because its warriors are fighting with surprising courage and efficiency. With tanks receiving more anti-aircraft systems that can neutralize missiles like the KH-22, created to sink aircraft carriers, the Ukrainians could completely beat the Russian army and the mercenaries of the Wagner Group.
But Ukraine’s possible success depends on Russia not resorting to its most devastating conventional arsenals and nuclear missiles. That point is what Zelensky seems not to contemplate Putin could devastate Ukraine, and may be willing to do so, rather than be defeated in this heinous war that he started.
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