Allies plotting to send Western tanks to the Ukraine front

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin convened a meeting of 50 nations to discuss further support for the war-torn country.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, left, welcomes US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov to Ramstein on Friday. Picture: AFP

The US and European allies announced substantial new supplies of armoured vehicles, artillery and munition for Ukraine on Thursday, local time, before a crucial meeting on military support for the next stage of the country’s war with Russia.

The Pentagon released a long list of $US2.5bn worth of supplies, including Bradley fighting vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, air defence systems and tens of thousands of rockets and artillery rounds to bolster Ukraine’s forces.

Britain announced it would send 600 Brimstone missiles, Denmark said it would donate 19 French-made Caesar howitzers, and Sweden promised its Archer artillery system, a modern mobile howitzer that has been requested by Kyiv for months.

The arms announcements came a day before US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin convened a meeting of defence and other officials from 50 countries, including all 30 NATO members, in Ramstein, Germany, to discuss what further support they could offer the war-torn country.

Mr Austin told the Western ­allies they needed to “dig even deeper” to support Ukraine with military aid.

“This is a decisive moment for Ukraine,” he said. “The Ukrainian people are watching us, the Kremlin is watching us, and history is watching us.”

Ukrainian President Volody­myr Zelensky, addressing the meeting via videolink, implored allies to “speed up” arms deliveries.

He said partners needed “not to bargain about different numbers of tanks but to open that principal supply that will stop evil”.

But the US and Germany have so far fallen short of granting Mr Zelensky’s requests for their most modern battle tanks, which the Kremlin warned would amount to an “extremely dangerous” escalation if sent by the West.

Moscow said the West had a “dramatic delusion” that Ukraine could win on the battlefield against Russia, adding that the conflict was “developing in an upward spiral”.

Germany has been cautious about providing heavy weapons for the war effort, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz was facing mounting pressure within Europe to authorise exports of German-made Leopard tanks.

At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, a day earlier, Mr Scholz told US congressmen that Germany would supply tanks to Ukraine if the US sent tanks too, a senior US politician said.

Visiting Kyiv, EU chief Charles Michel said he believed that tanks “must be delivered”.

And Mr Zelensky, also addressing Davos via videolink, said that “there are times where we shouldn’t hesitate”. “When someone says ‘I will give tanks if someone else will also share tanks’ … I don’t think this is the right strategy to go with,” he said.

As the pledges came in, senior Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said it was “time to stop trembling at (Russian leader Vladimir) Putin and take the final step”.

“Ukraine needs tanks; tanks – the key to end war properly,” Mr Podolyak tweeted.

A US official confirmed that CIA director William Burns had visited Kyiv in recent days as the country gears up for what some say are Russia’s plans for a new ­offensive. “Director Burns travelled to Kyiv where he met with Ukrainian intelligence counterparts, as well as President Zelensky, and reinforced our continued support for Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression,” the official said.

The Washington Post wrote that Mr Burns, in his second secret trip to Kyiv in just over two months, briefed Mr Zelensky on how the US sees Russia as setting its military plans in the coming weeks and months.

The US arms package also did not include the ATA long-range missiles that Ukraine has requested. The missiles, which travel up to 300km, could enable Ukraine to strike Russian supply routes and depots far behind the frontlines that are not reachable with current HIMARS rocket systems. But Western partners also fear that Ukraine could use long-range weapons to hit deep inside Russian territory despite Kyiv promising it would not do so.

Russia warned defeat in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear conflict. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Mr Putin’s national security council, wrote on the Telegram that Western politicians were “repeating like a mantra: to achieve peace, Russia must lose”.

“It never occurs to any of them to draw the following elementary conclusion from this: the loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger the start of a ­nuclear war. Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends. This should be clear to anyone. Even a Western politician.”