There has also inevitably been some internal German politics involved. This is already in progress in fact as Poland announced the purchase of 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks with associated equipment with delivery starting this year in a deal worth $1.4 billion (£1.13 billion). This would destroy a massive export market for Germany as the country exported 2,399 battle tanks between 19. But the underlying issue is that the Germans fear that if the various European states that have bought Leopard 2 tanks from Germany supply them to Ukraine, they may well opt to replace their own inventories with US equipment instead. Readying its existing stock for battle will take some time.

Germany’s other problem is its relatively low stocks of the Leopard 2 tanks (about 320 for all of Germany’s own defence needs down from 4,000 main battle tanks during the cold war period). Until this week the US was adamant it wouldn’t send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, saying they were unsuited to the conditions of warfare there.

So he would only take such a major decision with clear US approval and – most importantly – with evidence that the US would participate in a similar deal to supply its own tanks. Scholz is keenly aware of Germany’s reliance on the US for its security. In addition to a general fear of escalation, there was much public discussion of Germany’s aversion to involvement in armed conflict (understandable given its 20th-century history) and Berlin’s hopes to rebuild relations with Moscow eventually.īut this is not the whole story. Even the Nato meeting held at the Ramstein US air base in Germany on January 20 to discuss the issue ended without a decision, much to the frustration of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and some of Kyiv’s other western allies. But for some months, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz resisted the decision to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. For the first time, western countries are providing substantial offensive capabilities to support a major campaign to regain lost territory.

The decision to provide heavy tanks to Ukraine in significant numbers constitutes a step change in western military support for Ukraine.

Modern german military tanks