Washington — President Biden announced Wednesday that the U.S. will send 31 top-of-the-line M-1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, delivering on a key request from Kyiv that will provide a major boost to Ukrainian firepower over the coming months.
“Today, I’m announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion,” Mr. Biden said at the White House, flanked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The security package is worth roughly $400 million, the Pentagon said.
The move comes after Germany said it would quickly provide 14 of its own Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and allow Western partners to re-export their own, a move that Mr. Biden praised. France, the U.K., Finland, the Netherlands and other nations are also sending key security assistance, Mr. Biden noted, emphasizing that the United States’ move is part of a concerted effort by Western allies.
“Today’s announcement builds on the hard work and commitment from countries around the world, led by the United States of America, to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s what this is about, helping Ukraine protect and defend Ukrainian land. It is not an offensive threat to Russia. There is no offensive threat to Russia. If Russian troops return to Russia … where they belong, this war would be over today.”
The delivery of the Abrams tanks will take several months, given the time needed to procure them and train Ukrainian troops on their use.
A U.S. Army M-1 Abrams tank fires during a NATO exercise in Latvia on March 26, 2021.
INTS KALNINS / REUTERS
On a call with reporters previewing the president’s announcement, senior administration officials said the decision to provide the tanks is a “continuation of our effort to provide Ukraine with the capabilities that they need to continue to better defend themselves.” Mr. Biden spoke with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. Wednesday morning ahead of his remarks.
The M-1 Abrams is the U.S. military’s main tank system and “the most capable tanks in the world,” Mr. Biden said. Ukrainian officials have been pleading with Western allies to provide them with tanks to bolster counter-offensives in the spring aimed at retaking areas held by dug-in Russian troops. The U.S. and more than 50 other countries committed to providing roughly 500 other armored vehicles during talks last week.
The Abrams tanks and other armored vehicles are key to helping Ukraine fight the Russians on open terrain, like that found in the mostly flat Donbas region, which has seen intense fighting between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists since 2014.
U.S. officials have for weeks resisted arming the Ukrainians with Abrams tanks, arguing the Leopard tanks, which run on diesel as opposed to the jet fuel needed to power the Abrams, are better suited to meet the Ukrainians’ immediate needs on the battlefield. But pressure from other allies — particularly Poland and the Baltic states — and the Ukrainians themselves to provide Kyiv with advanced tank systems had been growing for weeks.
One of the U.S. officials on the call Wednesday said the tanks will help Ukraine defend itself against expected Russian offensives in the spring and help Ukrainian troops reclaim territory.
“We want to make sure that they have the right capabilities to not only defend themselves against the Russian onslaught — and we do expect that Mr. Putin and the Russian military will try to go on the offense here in coming weeks and months, as the weather gets better — but also that they have the ability to retake, to reclaim their sovereign territory,” including Crimea, the official said.
The U.S. announcement happened to fall on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s birthday. He told a German TV network on Tuesday that the tanks from Western allies will provide a much-needed morale boost to his soldiers on the front lines.
“They do only one very important thing — they motivate our soldiers to fight for their own values, because they show that the whole world is with you,” Zelenskyy said.
The tanks will not come directly from the U.S. arsenal. The administration will instead procure the systems using funds from its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. That decision, coupled with the extensive training needed to operate the tanks, means it will take a while for the vehicles to be in Ukrainian hands.
“We’re talking months as opposed to weeks,” one senior administration official said.
“[The Pentagon] is currently working through the mechanisms to deliver the fuel and equipment Ukraine will need to operate and to maintain the Abrams,” another official added. “We do expect other nations to announce contributions of additional armored capability, including some that will be readily available for use on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months.”
David Martin, Eleanor Watson and Haley Ott contributed reporting.
The United States and European allies including Germany have agreed to send state-of-the-art, Western tanks to help bolster Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion. As Debora Patta reports, the tanks are the latest in a long line of Western military aid, and for the Ukrainians fighting on the war’s freezing frontlines, they can’t come soon enough.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
The Zambian student who died in battle in Ukraine was buried Wednesday in a private ceremony in his home country, a family spokesman told CNN.
Lemekani Nathan Nyirenda died on the frontlines of the Ukraine war while fighting for Russian mercenary group Wagner in September last year.
His family representative Dr. Ian Banda spoke to CNN Wednesday morning as the family headed to Nyirenda’s final resting place in his village.
“We are going to bury him now…. We are in a convoy… His (Nyirenda’s) mother and father are in a vehicle behind me. They are crying right now,” Banda told CNN.
Nyirenda’s body was returned to Zambia last month. On arrival on December 11, his remains were transported to Zambia’s University Teaching Hospital Mortuary for post-mortem checks in compliance with Zambian laws.
“The funeral gathering at the Nyirenda family residence, burial and memorial service formalities shall only commence upon completion of the aforementioned mandatory statutory procedures,” a family statement said at the time.
Banda told CNN forensic investigation carried out on Nyirenda’s body had been “confirmed,” without releasing further details.
Nyirenda is not the first African student killed in the Ukrainian battlefront fighting for Russia in a development that has sparked fury across the continent.
A Tanzanian national, identified as Nemes Tarimo by his country’s foreign ministry, was killed last October last while fighting with Wagner in exchange for money and amnesty, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Tarimo was a master’s student at the Moscow Technological University, studying Business Informatics before being sent to jail for seven years for undisclosed criminal charges in March last year, the ministry stated, adding that his body had been dispatched from Russia and was expected to arrive in Tanzania soon for burial.
Nyirenda, 23, was sponsored by the Zambian government to study nuclear engineering at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute but was convicted in 2020 of unspecified crimes in Russia and imprisoned for nine years and six months, Zambia’s foreign ministry said in a statement announcing his death in November.
In a follow-up statement last month, the ministry explained Nyirenda was pardoned by the Russian government in August “to join a military operation in exchange for amnesty” and “was killed in September 2022 while participating in military activities.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group admitted to recruiting Nyirenda from a Russian jail, saying he chose to fight to “repay (Africa’s) debts” to Russia and “died a hero.”
The U.S. is now poised to send its top-of-the-line battle tank, the M-1 Abrams, to Ukraine after insisting for months that the tanks were too complex to operate and maintain — becoming the latest country to agree to bring modern tanks to Ukraine as it fights off the Russian invasion.
However, U.S. officials said it would likely take months before Abrams tanks arrive in Ukraine. Once they arrive in force, the tanks would give Ukraine major new capabilities to launch offensives against dug-in Russian troops.
It’s unclear how many tanks are being sent, and Ukrainian tank crews must first be trained in both operations and maintenance.
The news comes on the heels of Germany’s expected announcement that it will be sending its own Leopard tanks, and Poland’s request to Berlin Monday for permission to export its own Leopard tanks, which were made in Germany. Other countries that operate the Leopard are expected to follow suit.
The M1 Abrams, a third-generation American main battle tanks, are seen at the end of the joint military exercises, at the training ground in Nowa Deba.
Photo by Artur Widak/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Ukraine has been asking for Abrams tanks from the U.S., but as recently as last week, the Pentagon remained reluctant.
“We’re not there yet,” Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said last Thursday when asked about fulfilling the request for the tanks.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive. It’s hard to train on…it is not the easiest system to maintain,” Kahl told reporters on Wednesday.
Last week in Germany, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said allies are focused on getting Ukraine what it needs before the spring.
“So we have a window of opportunity here, you know, between now and the spring when I — you know, when — whenever they commence their operation, their counteroffensive, and that’s not a long time, and we have to pull together the right capabilities,” Austin said.
In recent weeks, defense officials have emphasized the Abrams tank is not what Ukraine needs right now because of the significant maintenance it requires and the fact that it runs on jet fuel, not diesel like some other models of tanks. Despite its difficulty, the Abrams still would provide a significant capability for Ukraine to go on the offensive even if it’s in the medium to long-term.
It’s unclear what prompted the U.S. to reverse its position on providing M1 Abrams to Ukraine.
The U.S. has committed to training 500 Ukrainians per month on combined arms maneuvers – how to move in battalion sized groups and coordinate operations between air and ground. That large-scale training is in addition to specific training on complex weapons systems the U.S. has recently committed, like Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Patriot air defense systems.
The U.S. has committed more than $26.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration.
Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.
Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.
McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.
“When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”
Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.
Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”
The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.
Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”
Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.
CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.
Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.
The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.
In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”
Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.
When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.
In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”
Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.
It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”
To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”
Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.
Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”
Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.
Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the samesince late 2019.
The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.
McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)
Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.
A new Leopard 2 A7V heavy battle tank, the most advanced version of the German-made tank.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Germany has again refused to commit to allowing German-made tanks to be sent to Ukraine despite intense pressure.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Tuesday there has been no change in Berlin’s position on whether to allow German-made Leopard 2 tanks to be sent to Ukraine, or on permitting other countries with German-made tanks to send their units to Kyiv. He added that the government still needed to assess the situation.
“I can tell you there is no new information here, the situation has not changed, and we are preparing our decision, which will come very soon,” he said at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
“We are looking into the matter, what the current status is regarding our Leopard tanks,” he said in translated comments. He noted that Berlin was looking not only at its inventory and industry stocks, but also at the compatibility of its tanks for combat in Ukraine, as well as issues around the logistics of supply and maintenance.
Aware that Berlin’s reluctance over tanks has attracted widespread criticism, Pistorius insisted that Germany was one of Ukraine’s top military supporters aside from the U.S. and U.K., and that this was “often forgotten in the public discussion.”
The latest comments from Berlin come after months of pressure on German government to offer Ukraine some of its Leopard 2 tanks, or to allow its allies to export their own German-made battle tanks to the war-torn country.
A defense summit last Friday at the Ramstein air base failed to deliver an agreement on tanks for Kyiv and, until now, only the U.K. had pledged to send 14 of its own Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine.
A Challenger 2 main battle tank on display for The Royal Tank Regiment Regimental Parade, on Sept. 24, 2022, in Bulford, England.
On Tuesday, NATO’s Stoltenberg sought to defend Germany from what is likely to be inevitable criticism following this latest refusal to budge on tanks, saying he was “confident that we will have a solution soon.”
He noted that the war had reached a “pivotal moment,” however, and that allies “must provide heavier units to Ukraine. And we must do it faster.”
Kyiv has for months pleaded with its allies for heavy battle tanks that it says could be decisive in the outcome of the war.
Germany was believed to be reluctant to send its own tanks unless the U.S. delivered its own Abrams vehicles. Washington has been noncommittal, saying that just the training to maintain and operate its tanks would require months.
German Defense Minister Pistorius insisted Tuesday that there was no disunity between Berlin and its allies, saying, “there are some partners that are still evaluating their decisions and others want to go a bit faster, but we are not un-united.”
Despite Germany’s assurances, Kyiv’s allies have become frustrated with Berlin’s reluctance over tanks.
On Saturday, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania issued a joint statement for Germany “to provide Leopard tanks to Ukraine now.” Poland and Finland have repeatedly expressed they are prepared to supply Leopard 2 units, with Reuters reporting that Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki on Monday signaled Warsaw could proceed without Berlin’s approval.
“We will ask for such permission, but this is an issue of secondary importance. Even if we did not get this approval … we would still transfer our tanks together with others to Ukraine”, Morawiecki said Monday, according to Reuters. “The condition for us at the moment is to build at least a small coalition of countries.” Poland’s defense minister confirmed on Tuesday that Warsaw had asked Berlin for permission to re-export its own Leopard 2s to Ukraine.
Germany’s position seemed to have been thawing over recent days. On Sunday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told French news outlet LCI that Berlin would not block Poland from sending its own Leopard 2s to Ukraine. That same day, newly appointed German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who only assumed his post last Thursday, on Sunday said that he expected a decision imminently.
France said it has not excluded sending its own Leclerc tanks to Ukraine. After meeting with his German counterpart Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that he had “asked the army minister to work on it, and nothing has been ruled out.”
He added that a decision would be made based on several criteria: ensuring any offer of tanks is not “escalatory” and accounts for the “reality in terms of capacity, maintenance in operational condition and training times.” The third criteria, Macron said, is not weakening France’s own defense capabilities.
— CNBC’s Ruxandra Iordache contributed reporting to this story.
Newswise — DALLAS (SMU) – What most sparks a region’s desire to seek independence from their country – income or identity?
A new study from SMU (Southern Methodist University, Dallas) and UC3M (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain) found that the group people identify with tends to play a bigger factor in secession than differences in per capita income between regions.
Identity was shown to be a larger factor than income for many real-life examples of pro-independence movements in recent years – such as Tibet in China and Tigray and other Southern Nations in Ethiopia. Researchers looked at a total of 173 countries with 3,003 subnational regions, like Texas and California in the United States or Canadian provinces in Quebec and Ontario.
The mathematical model that SMU and UC3M created also would have correctly predicted that the Soviet Union was in danger of collapsing before its eventual demise in 1991 and which Soviet republics would have been the first to declare independence.
“What we found is striking: separatism would be alive and well even if there were no income differences between regions, whereas it would almost completely die out if everyone spoke the same language,” said Klaus Desmet, Ruth and Kenneth Altshuler Centennial Interdisciplinary Professor of Economics at SMU and author of the study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “From this we can conclude that the key driver of secessionist sentiment is identity, rather than income.”
Desmet and economists Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín and Ömer Özak used their model to test if support for secession would grow stronger or weaker if there was no difference in the incomes of the people who lived there or no difference in their identity.
Across the globe, they found that support for secession would drop from an average of 7.5 percent of a region’s population to 0.6 percent in the absence of identity differences. Yet eliminating income differences would do almost nothing in terms of weakening the desire for secessionism, the study shows.
Ortuño-Ortín is a professor of economics at UC3M. Özak is an associate professor of economics at SMU and a research fellow at IZA.
The research team wanted to identify the major cause of secessionism because there are often questions of whether economic policies could potentially ease tensions.
“Of course, the drivers of separatism are complex, but if we want to simplify a bit, there are two key reasons why certain subnational regions might prefer to become independent,” Desmet said. “A first is income per capita: if my region is relatively rich, I may feel that I am ‘subsidizing’ the rest of the country, and that I would be better off if my region became independent. A second is identity: if my region has a separate ethnic or linguistic identity, I may feel less connected to the nation, and prefer to secede.”
Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín and Özak were particularly curious about what was driving secessionist tensions in two of the team’s home countries – with Flanders in Belgium having a strong pro-independence movement and Catalonia having made a bid for independence from Spain a few years ago.
“Interestingly, because Flanders and Catalonia are relatively rich, the push for independence has been couched in economic terms,” Desmet said.
However, the study indicates that economic forces tend to be secondary when it comes to understanding secessionism.
How the study was done
The research team’s mathematical model ran on two options – whether subnational regions chose to form their own country or stay in the country they’re currently part of.
The economists then plugged different scenarios into the model – such as if the income per capita was the same throughout a country or if everyone spoke the same language. They also looked at what the income and languages spoken in those regions actually were.
Income per capita data for the different countries and subnational regions came from a source that economists widely use – Geographically Based Economic Data from Yale University, known as G-Econ 4.0 – for the year 2000.
Language was used as a measure for identity, as it has been shown to be a major identity marker that differentiates populations in other studies. The SMU-UC3M team relied on a detailed database of languages that they developed using information from the World Language Mapping System.
The tricky part was determining how much weight income and identity should get in the model’s calculations.
“For example, if we gave too much weight to linguistic identity, we would see too much separatism, and if we gave too little weight to linguistic identity, everyone would want to join and stay together,” Desmet said.
To gauge how their model matched up with the real world, the research team looked at how the predictions they got mirrored known breakups around the world, like the dissolution of the Soviet Union to create sovereign countries like Ukraine, Armenia and Lithuania.
Their mathematical model generated predictions for the stability of 173 countries and 3,003 subnational regions. They then looked at how well these predictions lined up with actual secessionist movements and with the actual stability of states. Data for secessionist movements came from Wikipedia. A total of 2,529 hotspots were identified. Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín and Özak also consulted which countries were labeled as unstable in the Fragile States Index, an annual report put out by Washington, D.C.-based Fund for Peace.
“When doing these ‘checks,’ it turns out that our model performs very well,” Desmet said.
For instance, the model – based on data from the late 1980s – predicted that Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia had a strong likelihood of seceding from the Soviet Union. All of those countries wound up being among the first to leave the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The identity model also showed that Tibet in China, Tigray in Ethiopia, Bavaria and Saarland in Germany, Aceh in Indonesia and Lombardia and Sardinia all have the potential of wanting to secede from their country. Many of those same subnational regions regularly make the news for pro-independence movements today.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and over 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to announce the delivery of German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday, an official with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.
That decision is a significant U-turn and potentially a decisive moment in the war as it should pave the way for a broader coalition of countries to send battle tanks to the fronts against the Russian invaders. As Leopard 2 tanks are made in Germany, Berlin has to give its permission for their re-export.
Berlin has long resisted sending the Leopard 2s, wanting Washington to take the first step in sending heavy armor. That kind of joint action finally appeared to be imminent on Tuesday, with two U.S. officials saying the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden was leaning toward sending “a significant number” of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. An announcement on the U.S. tanks could come as early as this week.
Scholz’s expected announcement — which has not yet been officially confirmed — comes as the chancellor is scheduled to address the German parliament on Wednesday at 1 p.m. According to the official, Germany will also confirm that it will allow other countries such as Poland to send their Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Warsaw said on Tuesday that it had sent its formal request for those re-exports.
German magazine Spiegel also reported Tuesday evening that the chancellor had decided to supply Ukraine with Leopard tanks, saying that Germany would send “at least one company of Leopard 2A6s” as part of a broader coalition of countries that would also send the German-made vehicle.
A German government spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
Ukraine had pressed hard for Germany to agree to send tanks at a meeting of defense ministers at the U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany in Friday, but German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius dashed Kyiv’s hope, saying no decision had been made.
Finland could reconsider its joint NATO bid with Sweden if Stockholm’s application is delayed further, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Tuesday, a day after Turkey said it would not support the Swedish candidacy.
“You have to assess the situation,” Haavisto told Finnish public broadcaster Yle. “Has something happened that the longer term would prevent the Swedish project from going ahead? It [is] too early to take a position on that.”
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO together last October, as a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and Hungary are the last two members of the military alliance who still need to ratify the joint bid.
While Budapest has pledged it would sign off the bid, Ankara is yet to follow suit.
But relations between Sweden and Turkey have taken a turn for the worse in recent days, after a far-right Danish-Swedish politician burned a copy of the Quran during a protest in Stockholm last Saturday.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the burning was an insult, and that Sweden would not receive “any support from [Turkey] on the NATO issue.”
Haavisto seemed more restrained in an interview to Reuters, also on Tuesday morning. When asked if Finland could join NATO on its own, the Foreign Minister said: “I do not see the need for a discussion about that.”
Haavisto also told Reuters the three-way talks between Finland, Sweden and Turkey on NATO accession would be paused “for a couple of weeks” until “the dust has settled after the current situation.”
“No conclusions should be drawn yet,” Haavisto added.
In the European bubble in Brussels, diamonds aren’t anyone’s best friend anymore.
The Belgian government’s reluctance to ban imports of Russian diamonds, which would hurt the city of Antwerp, a global hub for the precious stones, has outraged Ukraine and its supporters within the EU.
Ukraine has been pushing to stop the import of Russian rough diamonds because the trade enriches Alrosa, a partially state-owned Russian enterprise.
While such a crackdown wouldn’t inflict the same damage on Vladimir Putin’s economy as a prohibition on all fossil fuels, for example, the continuing flow of Russian diamonds has become a symbol of Western countries putting their national interests above those of Ukraine.
New plans for a fresh round of sanctions against Putin have now reignited the debate over the morality of Europe’s trade in diamonds from Russia.
Belgium is fed up with being scapegoated. According to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Putin’s ability to sell diamonds to all western markets now needs to be shut off.
“Russian diamonds are blood diamonds,” De Croo said in a statement to POLITICO. “The revenue for Russia from diamonds can only stop if the access of Russian diamonds to Western markets is no longer possible. On forging that solid front, Belgium is working with its partners.”
The West’s economic war against Russia has already had an impact. Partly because of U.S. sanctions, the Russian diamond trade in Antwerp has already been severely hit. But those rough Russian diamonds are diverted to other diamond markets, and often find their way back to the West, cut and polished.
That’s why Belgium is working with partners to introduce a “watertight” traceability system for diamonds, a Belgian official said. If it works, this could hurt Moscow more than if Washington or Brussels are flying solo.
“Europe and North America together represent 70 percent of the world market for natural diamonds,” the official said. “Based on this market power, we can ensure the necessary transparency in the global diamond sector and structurally ban blood diamonds from the global market. The war in Ukraine provides for a strong momentum.”
Sanctions at last?
Belgium’s offensive comes just when its position on sanctioning Russian diamonds is under renewed attack — not just from other EU countries and Belgian opposition parties, but also within De Croo’s own government.
According to Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Putin’s ability to sell diamonds to all western markets now needs to be shut off | Laurie Dieffembacq/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images
The EU is preparing a new round of sanctions against Russia ahead of the first anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Countries such as Poland and Lithuania are again urging the EU to include diamonds. However, one EU diplomat said the discussion is now more an “intra-Belgian fight than a European one.”
De Croo leads a coalition of seven ideologically diverse parties. The greens and socialists within his government are pushing him to actively lobby for hitting diamonds in the next EU sanctions round.
In particular, Vooruit, the Dutch-speaking socialist party, is making a renewed push. Belgian MP Vicky Reynaert will be introducing a new resolution in the Belgian Parliament proposing an import ban.
“It’s becoming impossible to explain that Belgium is not open to blocking Russian diamonds,” Reynaert said. “We want Belgium to actively engage with the European Commission to take action.” Belgian socialist MEP Kathleen Van Brempt is pushing the same idea at the European level.
But the initiative from the socialists isn’t likely to deliver an import ban, or even import quotas, four officials from other Belgian political parties said. De Croo is now set on an international solution instead. No one expects the socialists to destabilize De Croo’s fragile Belgian coalition government over the issue of diamonds.
Even if all seven parties in the Belgian government did agree to hit Russian diamonds, there would be another key obstacle.
In the complicated Belgian political system, the regional governments would have a say as well. The government of the northern region of Flanders is against an import ban. That government is led by the Flemish nationalists, whose party president, Bart De Wever, is also the mayor of Antwerp. “Nothing will change their minds on this,” one of the Belgian officials said of the nationalists’ position.
Blood diamonds
Belgium hopes that by building an international coalition to trace Russia’s “blood diamonds” it will finally stop being seen as a roadblock to action.
The industry agrees. “Sanctions are not the solution,” said Tom Neys of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. “An international framework of complete transparency, with the same standards of compliance as Antwerp, can be that solution,” he said.
Such a transatlantic plan would have a huge impact, according to Hans Merket, a researcher with the International Peace Information Service, a human rights nonprofit organization. “That would have much more effect than the current U.S. sanctions, which are being circumvented,” said Merket.
But the devil will be in the details. Will Belgium succeed in building a transatlantic coalition? Are consumers willing to pay more for their diamonds, or does it still risk diverting the goods to other markets where traders are less diligent?
One of the Belgian officials was doubtful of Belgium’s chances of success. If the international alliance falters, Belgium and the EU should consider moving ahead on their own to convince the rest of the world to act. “But let’s give De Croo a shot at this,” the official said.
BERLIN — Germany and its European partners plan to “quickly” send two Leopard 2 tank battalions to Ukraine — suggesting about 80 vehicles — the government in Berlin announced Wednesday, adding that Germany would provide one company of 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks “as a first step.”
Other countries likely to send Leopards to the war against Russia include Poland, Spain, Norway and Finland.
The decision by Chancellor Olaf Scholz — which emerged on Tuesday evening — marks a decisive moment in Western support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, which entered its 12th month this week and could soon heat up further as Moscow is expected to launch a new offensive.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters that the training of Ukrainian crews on the tanks will begin “very soon,” and that the Leopards will be arriving in Ukraine in about two months.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was “very happy” with the promise of tanks from the U.S., Germany and Britain. “But speaking frankly, the number of tanks and the delivery time to Ukraine is critical,” he said, in an interview with Sky News.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, welcomed the German announcement as a “first step.”
“Leopards are very much needed,” he said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy himself also welcomed the move on Twitter. “Sincerely grateful to the Chancellor and all our friends in” Germany, he said.
Russia’s Ambassador to Germany Sergei Nechaev said in a statement the decision was “extremely dangerous,” and took the conflict “to a new level of confrontation.”
Kyiv had long urged Germany and other partners to supply its army with the powerful German-built Leopard 2 tank, but Scholz hesitated to take the decision, partly out of concern that it could drag Germany or NATO into the conflict. He remained adamant that such a move had to be closely coordinated and replicated by Western allies, most notably the United States.
During a speech in Germany’s parliament on Wednesday, Scholz sought to defend his long hesitations on tank deliveries, saying that it “was right and it is right that we did not allow ourselves to be rushed” into taking a decision but insisted “on this close cooperation” with allies, notably the United States.
Scholz also stressed that Germany would not actively engage in the war but would continue to seek to “prevent an escalation between Russia and NATO.” He also launched a direct appeal to German citizens who might be skeptical: “Trust me, trust the German government: We will continue to ensure … that this support is provided without the risks for our country rising in the wrong direction.”
The news of an imminent announcement by U.S. President Joe Biden to send “a significant number” of American M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine facilitated the chancellor’s decision. Scholz had come under huge pressure from European partners like Poland, as well as his own coalition partners in government, to no longer block the delivery of the German tank. Since they are German-made, their re-export needed the approval of the German government.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted that he “strongly welcomes” Berlin’s decision | Dirk Waem /Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
“The goal is to quickly form two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine,” a German government spokesperson said.
“As a first step, Germany will provide a company of 14 Leopard-2 A6 tanks from Bundeswehr stocks. Other European partners will also hand over Leopard-2 tanks,” the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson also said the training of Ukrainian crews on the tanks “is to begin rapidly in Germany.” Berlin would also provide “logistics, ammunition and maintenance of the systems.”
In addition to the 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks, Germany will also send two tank recovery vehicles, Deputy Defense Minister Siemtje Möller said in a letter to defense policy lawmakers, seen by POLITICO.
Möller wrote that Ukrainian tank crews will undergo a six-week-training on the Leopards, in Germany which is supposed to start in early February. “This procedure should enable the Leopard 2 A6 to be taken over by Ukraine by the end of the first quarter of 2023.”
Germany will provide partner countries like Spain, Poland, Finland and Norway, which “want to quickly deliver Leopard-2 tanks from their stocks,” the necessary re-export permission, the spokesperson said.
The decision by Chancellor Olaf Scholz marks a decisive moment of Western support for Ukraine | David Hecker/Getty Images
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted that he “strongly welcomes” Berlin’s decision. “At a critical moment in Russia’s war, these can help Ukraine to defend itself, win & prevail as an independent nation.”
Spain, which owns one of the largest fleets of Leopards in the EU, with 347 tanks, has previously said it would send tanks to Kyiv as part of a European coalition, according to El País.
The Norwegian government is considering sending eight of its 36 Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but no decision has been made yet, Norwegian daily DN reported late Tuesday after a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense, quoting sources close to the deliberation.
Portugal, which has 37 Leopards, could provide four tanks to the assembling European coalition, a source close to the government told Correio da Manhã late on Tuesday.
The Netherlands, which is leasing 18 Leopards from Germany, is also weighing supplying some of their armored vehicles, Dutch newswire ANP reported, quoting a government spokesperson. On Tuesday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was “willing to consider” buying the tanks from Germany and shipping them to Ukraine, but that no decision had been made.
On Wednesday, the Swedish defense minister said that Sweden did not exclude sending some of its own tanks at a later stage, according to Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.
Wilhelmine Preussen and Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
It appears it’s only a matter of time before the Kremlin orders another draft to replenish its depleted ranks and make up for the battlefield failings of its command.
This week, Norway’s army chief said Russia has already suffered staggering losses, estimating 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since February — a figure much higher than American estimates, as General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, had suggested in November that the toll was around 100,000.
But whatever the exact tally, few military analysts doubt Russian forces are suffering catastrophic casualties. In a video posted this week, Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova, who heads the Russia Behind Bars charity, said that of the 50,000 conscripts recruited from jails by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s paramilitary mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, 40,000 are now dead, missing or deserted.
In some ways, the high Wagner toll isn’t surprising, with increasing reports from both sides of the front lines that Prigozhin has been using his recruits with little regard for their longevity. One American volunteer, who asked to remain unnamed, recently told POLITICO that he was amazed how Wagner commanders were just hurling their men at Ukrainian positions, only to have them gunned down for little gain.
Andrey Medvedev, a Wagner defector who recently fled to Norway, has also told reporters that in the months-long Russian offensive against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, former prisoners were thrown into battle as cannon fodder, as meat. “In my platoon, only three out of 30 men survived. We were then given more prisoners, and many of those died too,” he said.
Of course, Wagner is at the extreme end when it comes to carelessness with lives — but as Ukraine’s deadly New Year’s Day missile strike demonstrated, regular Russian armed forces are also knee-deep in blood. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed at Makiivka — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the invasion began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll was nearer 400.
Many of those killed there came from Samara, a city located at the confluence of the Volga and Samara rivers, where Communist dictator Joseph Stalin had an underground complex built for Russian leaders in case of a possible evacuation from Moscow. The bunker was built in just as much secrecy as the funerals that have been taking place over the past few weeks for the conscripts killed at Makiivka. “Lists [of the dead] will not be published,” Samara’s military commissar announced earlier this month.
To make up for these losses, Russia’s military bloggers, who have grown increasingly critical, have been urging a bigger partial mobilization, this time of 500,000 reservists to add to the 300,000 already called up in September. President Vladimir Putin has denied this, and Kremlin press spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also dismissed the possibility, saying that the “topic is constantly artificially activated both from abroad and from within the country.”
Yet, last month, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called for Russia’s army to be boosted from its current 1.1 million to 1.5 million, and he announced new commands in regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia, on the border with Finland.
Meanwhile, circumstantial evidence that another draft will be called is also accumulating — though whether it will be done openly or by stealth is unclear.
Along these lines, both the Kremlin and Russia’s political-military establishment have been redoubling propaganda efforts, attempting to shape a narrative that this war isn’t one of choice but of necessity, and that it amounts to an existential clash for the country.
General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” | Ruslan Braun/Creative commons via Flickr
In a recent interview, General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” and that course corrections are needed when it comes to mobilization. He talked about threats arising from Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Similarly, in his Epiphany address this month, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said, “the desire to defeat Russia today has taken very dangerous forms. We pray to the Lord that he will bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.” And the increasingly unhinged Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the war in Ukraine isn’t going as planned, so it might be necessary to use nuclear weapons to avoid failure.
As Russia’s leaders strive to sell their war as an existential crisis, they are mining ever deeper for tropes to heighten nationalist fervor too, citing the Great Patriotic War at every turn. At the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, which commemorates the breaking of the German siege of the city in 1944, a new exhibition dedicated to “The Lessons of Fascism Yet to Be Learned” is due to be unveiled, and it is set to feature captured Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles. “It’s only logical that a museum dedicated to the struggle against Nazism would support the special operation directed against neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” a press release helpfully suggests.
In line with Putin’s insistence that the war is being waged to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists have also been endeavoring to popularize the slogan, “We can do it again.”
At the same time, there are signs that local recruitment centers are gearing up for another surge of draftees as well.
Rumors of a fresh partial mobilization have prompted some dual-citizen Central Asian workers — those holding Russian passports and who would be eligible to be drafted — to leave the country, and some say they’ve been prevented from exiting. A Kyrgyz man told Radio Free Europe he was stopped by Russian border guards when he tried to cross into Kazakhstan en route to Kyrgyzstan. “Russian border guards explained to me quite politely that ‘you are included in a mobilization list, this is the law, and you have no right to go,’” he said.
In order to prevent another surge of refuseniks, Moscow also seems determined to put up further restrictions on crossing Russia’s borders, including possibly making it obligatory for Russians to book a specific time and place in advance, so that they can exit. Amendments to a transport law introduced in the Duma on Monday would require “vehicles belonging to Russian transport companies, foreign transport companies, citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, stateless persons and other road users” to reserve a date and time “in order to cross the state border of the Russian Federation.”
Transport officials say this would only affect haulers and would help ease congestion near border checkpoints. But if so, then why are “citizens of the Russian Federation” included in the language?
All in all, manpower will be crucial for Russia to mount a spring offensive in the coming months. And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers on the battlefield. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest are necessary for an attacking force.
Tensions between Russia and Baltic EU member countries Estonia and Latvia escalated Monday after Moscow told Estonia’s ambassador to leave.
The Russian foreign ministry said it had asked Estonia’s ambassador to depart on February 7, citing “Russophobia” and Tallinn’s reduction of Russian embassy staff in the country.
“The Estonian leadership has been deliberately destroying the entire set of relations with Russia in recent years. Total Russophobia and the cultivation of animosity with regards to our country have been elevated by Tallinn to the rank of a state policy,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Estonia told Russia to cut the number of diplomats in Tallinn to eight to match the number of Estonian diplomats in Moscow. Because of this, the Russian foreign ministry said Monday it would downgrade diplomatic relations with Tallinn and each country would be represented by an interim charge d’affaires instead of an ambassador.
Estonia responded in kind by saying the Russian ambassador in Tallinn must also leave the country on February 7.
“Russia’s steps will not deter us from providing continued support to Ukraine, which has been fighting for its sovereignty and the security of us all for nearly a year now,” said Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu. “We will continue to support Ukraine as Russia is planning large-scale attacks, and we call on other like-minded countries to increase their assistance to Ukraine.”
Neighboring Latvia’s Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs later said his country would follow Estonia and also lower the level of diplomatic relations with Russia, effective February 24, “demanding Russia to act accordingly.”
Lithuania’s foreign ministry voiced “full solidarity” with Estonia and said Russia’s “unfounded and unjustified” move was “a sign of simple desperation.” Vilnius already expelled its Russian ambassador in April after reports of atrocities by Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
The diplomatic row came as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels to discuss Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, among other topics. The three Baltic countries have been vocal about demanding tougher sanctions for Russia as well as better assistance for Ukraine, with the trio urging Germany over the weekend to provide Leopard tanks to Kyiv.
When a major corruption scandal broke in Ukraine last weekend, reporters faced an excruciating dilemma between professional duty and patriotism. The first thought that came to my mind was: “Should I write about this for foreigners? Will it make them stop supporting us?”
There was no doubting the severity of the cases that were erupting into the public sphere. They cut to the heart of the war economy. In one instance, investigators were examining whether the deputy infrastructure minister had profited from a deal to supply electrical generators at an inflated price, while the defense ministry was being probed over an overpriced contract to supply food and catering services to the troops.
Huge stories, but in a sign of our life-or-death times in Ukraine, even my colleague Yuriy Nikolov, who got the scoop on the inflated military contract, admitted he had done everything he could not to publish his investigation. He took his findings to public officials hoping that they might be able to resolve the matter, before he finally felt compelled to run it on the ZN.UA website.
Getting a scoop that shocks your country, forces your government to start investigations and reform military procurement, and triggers the resignation of top officials is ordinarily something that makes other journalists jealous. But I fully understand how Nikolov feels about wanting to hold back when your nation is at war. Russia (and Ukraine’s other critics abroad) are, after all, looking to leap upon any opportunity to undermine trust in our authorities.
A journalist is meant to stay a little distant from the situation he or she covers. It helps to stay impartial and to stick to the facts, not emotions. But what if staying impartial is impossible as you have to cover the invasion of your own country? Naturally, you have to keep holding your government to account, but you are also painfully aware that the enemy is out there looking to exploit any opportunity to erode faith in the leadership and undermine national security.
That is exactly what Ukrainian journalists have to deal with every day. In the first six months of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and watchdogs decided to put their public criticism of the Ukrainian government on pause and focus on documenting Russian war crimes.
But that has backfired.
“This pause led to a rapid loss of accountability for many Ukrainian officials,” Mykhailo Tkach, one of Ukraine’s top investigative journalists, wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda.
His investigations about Ukrainian officials leaving the country during the war for lavish vacations in Europe led to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues. It also sparked the dismissal of the powerful deputy prosecutor general.
The Ukrainian government was forced to react to corruption and make a major reshuffle almost immediately. Would that happen if Ukrainian journalists decided to sit on their findings until victory? I doubt it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended up imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Is it still painful when you have to write about your own government’s officials’ flops when overwhelming enemy forces are trying to erase your nation from the planet, using every opportunity they can get to shake your international partners’ faith? Of course it is.
But in this case, there was definite room for optimism. Things are changing in Ukraine. The government had to react very quickly, under intense pressure from civil society and the independent press. Memes and social media posts immediately appeared, mocking the government’s pledge to buy eggs at massively inflated prices. Ultimately, the deputy infrastructure minister was fired and the deputy defense minister resigned.
This speedy response was praised by the European Commission and showed how far we really are from Russia, where authorities hunt down not the officials accused of corruption, but the journalists who report it.
As Tkach said, many believe that the war with the internal enemy will begin immediately after the victory over the external one.
However, we can’t really wait that long. It is important to understand that the sooner we win the battle with the internal enemy — high-profile corruption — the sooner we win the war against Russia.
“Destruction of corruption means getting additional funds for the defense capability of the country. And it means more military and civilian lives saved,” Tkach said.
What’s in the heads of heroes; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine scrambles global ballet community into action; Jacob Smith: The legally blind freeride skier.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
The German government will not object if Poland decides to send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, Germany’s top diplomat said Sunday, indicating movement on supplying weapons that Kyiv has described as essential to its ability to fend off an intensified Russian offensive.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told French TV channel LCI that Poland has not formally asked for Berlin’s approval to share some of its German-made Leopards but added “if we were asked, we would not stand in the way.”
German officials “know how important these tanks are” and “this is why we are discussing this now with our partners,” Baerbock said in interview clips posted by LCI.
Ukraine’s supporters pledged billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine during a meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday. International defense leaders discussed Ukraine’s urgent request for the Leopard 2 tanks, and the failure to work out an agreement overshadowed the new commitments.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, rear left, attends the opening speech of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, (on video screen) during the meeting of the ‘Ukraine Defense Contact Group’ at Ramstein Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, Friday, Jan. 20, 2023.
Michael Probst / AP
Germany is one of the main donors of weapons to Ukraine, and it ordered a review of its Leopard 2 stocks in preparation for a possible green light. Nonetheless, the government in Berlin has shown caution at each step of increasing its military aid to Ukraine, a hesitancy seen as rooted in its history and political culture.
Germany’s tentativeness has drawn criticism, particularly from Poland and the Baltic states, countries on NATO’s eastern flank that feel especially threatened by Russia’s renewed aggression.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that if the fellow NATO and European Union member did not consent to transferring Leopard tanks to Ukraine, his country was prepared to build a “smaller coalition” of countries that would send theirs anyway.
“Almost a year had passed since the outbreak of war,” Morawiecki said in an interview with Polish state news agency PAP published Sunday. “Evidence of the Russian army’s war crimes can be seen on television and on YouTube. What more does Germany need to open its eyes and start to act in line with the potential of the German state?”
Previously, some officials in Poland indicated that Finland and Denmark also were ready to send Leopards to Ukraine.
Earlier Sunday, the speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, said governments that give more powerful weapons to Ukraine risked causing a “global tragedy that would destroy their countries.”
“Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime would lead to a global catastrophe,” Volodin said. “If Washington and NATO supply weapons that would be used for striking peaceful cities and making attempts to seize our territory as they threaten to do, it would trigger a retaliation with more powerful weapons.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, said Sunday that he had asked his defense minister to “work on” the idea of sending some of France’s Leclerc battle tanks to Ukraine.
Macron spoke during a news conference in Paris with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as France and Germany commemorated the 60th anniversary of their post-World War II friendship treaty. In a joint declaration, the two countries committed to their “unwavering support” for Ukraine.
France will make its tank decision based on three criteria, Macron said: that sharing the equipment does not lead to an escalation of the conflict, that it would provide efficient and workable help when training time is taken into account, and that it wouldn’t weaken France’s own military.
Scholz did not respond when asked about the Leopard 2 tanks Sunday, but stressed that his country already has made sizable military contributions to Ukraine.
“The U.S. is doing a lot, Germany is doing a lot, too,” he said. “We have constantly expanded our deliveries with very effective weapons that are already available today. And we have always coordinated all these decisions closely with our important allies and friends.”
In Washington, two leading lawmakers urged the U.S. on Sunday to send some of its Abrams tanks to Ukraine in the interests of overcoming Germany’s reluctance to share its own, more suitable tanks.
“If we announced we were giving an Abrams tank, just one, that would unleash” the flow of tanks from Germany, Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC’s “This Week on Sunday.” “What I hear is that Germany’s waiting on us to take the lead.”
Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also spoke up for the U.S. sending Abrams.
“If it requires our sending some Abrams tanks in order to unlock getting the Leopard tanks from Germany, from Poland, from other allies, I would support that,” Coons said.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council, said Friday’s U.S.-led meeting at the air base in Germany “left no doubt that our enemies will try to exhaust or better destroy us,” adding that “they have enough weapons” to achieve the purpose.
Medvedev, a former Russian president, warned that “in case of a protracted conflict,” Russia could seek to form a military alliance with “the nations that are fed up with the Americans and a pack of their castrated dogs.”
Ukraine has argued it needs more weapons as it anticipates Russia’s forces launching a new offensive in the spring.
Oleksii Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, warned that Russia may try to intensify its attacks in the south and in the east and to cut supply channels of Western weapons, while conquering Kyiv “remains the main dream” in President Vladimir Putin’s “fantasies,” he said.
In a column published by online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda. he described the Kremlin’s goal in the conflict as a “total and absolute genocide, a total war of destruction”
Among those calling for more arms for Ukraine was the former British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who made a surprise trip to Ukraine on Sunday. Johnson, who was pictured in the Kyiv region town of Borodyanka, said he traveled to Ukraine at the invitation of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“This is the moment to double down and to give the Ukrainians all the tools they need to finish the job. The sooner Putin fails, the better for Ukraine and for the whole world,” Johnson said in a statement.
The last week was especially tragic for Ukraine even by the standards of a brutal war that has gone on for nearly a year, killing tens of thousands of people, uprooting millions more and creating vast destruction of Ukrainian cities.
A barrage of Russian missiles struck an apartment complex in the southeastern city of Dnipro on Jan. 14, killing at least 45 civilians. On Wednesday, a government helicopter crashed into a building housing a kindergarten in a suburb of Kyiv. Ukraine’s interior minister, other officials and a child on the ground were among the 14 people killed.
Zelenskyy vowed Sunday that Ukraine would ultimately prevail in the war.
“We are united because we are strong. We are strong because we are united,” the Ukrainian leader said in a video address as he marked Ukraine Unity Day, which commemorates when east and west Ukraine were united in 1919.
For decades now, Russians have known the drill. When there’s bad news brewing, such as the death of a leader, or a convulsive event, such as the Chernobyl disaster, State TV switches its programming and begins airing Tchaikovsky’s ballet, “Swan Lake.” Nothing to see her folks. But also note the choice of distraction. Ballet is centrally important to Russian society and to Russian image. Dancers slicing through the air and challenging laws of physics and gravity represent civility and grace. But, last February, when Russian military troops invaded Ukraine, Russian ballet troupes had their western tours cancelled and Moscow’s Bolshoi theater has shuttered shows by directors critical of Putin’s war. As we first reported last year, this brutal war plays out on the most delicate of fronts, leaving ballet in exile.
When ballet dancers are described as God’s athletes, well, you could offer up Olga
Smirnova as supporting evidence. She treads on air, coming in on little cat feet. She’s a Russian prima ballerina—one of the world’s leading dancers. But days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Smirnova pirouetted and stepped off her stage at the renowned Bolshoi Theater, with dramatic flourish. She took to social media to express her outrage. And then fled the country, the modern-day version of Nureyev or Baryshnikov defecting.
Jon Wertheim: When you sat down to write that social media post, what did you want to communicate? What did you want to say?
Olga Smirnova: I just couldn’t keep it inside. I was so ashamed of Russia. This is the true. I’m not ashamed that I’m Russian, but I’m ashamed because of Russia started this action.
Olga Smirnova
Jon Wertheim: I want to read what you wrote. You said you were against this war with every fiber of your being.” But I now feel that a line has been drawn that separates the before and the after.”
Olga Smirnova: It’s how I felt. 24th of February, this is, was the line, Because it’s all changed. All changed. The reputation of Russia and Russian people, even if you are not a soldier, you’re just Russian. It, it’s all, it still make a shadow on you.
Jon Wertheim: Being Russian.
Olga Smirnova: Being Russian. And it’s, it’s really painful.
Predictably, Smirnova’s post went viral. She was, after all, a leading light at Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. From the Russian word for “big,” Bolshoi is the world’s largest ballet company and the most prestigious. The theater is physically close to the Kremlin—a short walk away—and also aligned inextricably with the Russian government. Tsars loved the Bolshoi. For decades, Communist leaders used the Bolshoi theater for political stagecraft, holding rallies and giving national addresses there.
Alexei Ratmansky: This is something that celebrates Russia. Every important guest who would visit Soviet Union would be invited to the Bolshoi, see the performance. And that was a pride of, of Russia at any time.
Alexei Ratmansky
Alexei Ratmansky trained at the Bolshoi school and was for a time its artistic director. He was born in Russia, but grew up in Kyiv, where his parents still live. At the time of the invasion, he was in Russia choreographing two ballets. He left the country immediately, unwilling to continue working in a world so tied to the Putin regime.
Alexei Ratmansky: As I was going in a taxi to the airport, I felt these two ca– sand castles falling apart behind my back.
Jon Wertheim: Those sand castles were the work– the work you had done
Alexei Ratmansky: Yes, yes, yes. It was an agony. It was a very hard day.
And, of course, a catastrophic day for Ukraine. Indiscriminate bombings and missile strikes raining down upon the country, crushing lives and dreams… not least those of an ascendant ballerina from Kyiv, Polina Chepyk, age 17.
Jon Wertheim: You wanted to be a ballerina for years and years. What was it like when suddenly you couldn’t– couldn’t go to school, couldn’t dance?
Polina Chepyk: I was shocked. And I’m like, “Oh my God.” And first about what I’m thinking that I left my pointe shoes in college. It was my fir—
Jon Wertheim: That was your first thought?
Polina Chepyk: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: You left your pointe shoes at school.
Polina Chepyk: Yes. I left everything actually.
Polina Chepyk
War didn’t stop her in her footsteps. She resumed dancing at home, using whatever she could as a barre. But after a few days, her parents—both former dancers—focused on getting Polina out. They called on a famously well-connected figure in the tight knit ballet community: New Jersey-based Larissa Saveliev.
Jon Wertheim: You’re getting this barrage of emails from– from parents and from dancers. What– what are they– what are telling you? What are they asking you?
Larissa Saveliev: Oh, “please help… get us out of here.” They’re willing to give up everything else, but they have to dance. And the parents were– you know, “It doesn’t matter what we do, they have to dance.”
Jon Wertheim: This was their– their lifeline almost.
Larissa Saveliev: This is it. They just– they– they could not imagine not dance.
In the 1990s, she founded Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet competition and scholarship program, pairing aspiring dancers with ballet schools worldwide.
Now, in a humanitarian crisis, she—and the international ballet community—scrambled to action. Saveliev tapped her vast network, relocating more than a hundred young Ukrainian dancers to new schools and host families.
Larissa Saveliev: We give each child a number, just to move faster. And we say, “okay, number 55 is, like– just get a spot in Stuttgart, okay. Okay, number 54 just get a spot in– Dresden.”
Jon Wertheim: Cross it off the list.
Larissa Saveliev: “Cross it off the list”
Larissa Saveliev
When a slot opened for Polina, she stuffed leotards and tutus into a suitcase along with a bottle of her mom’s perfume, a reminder of home. And then she headed to Kyiv’s train station.
Polina Chepyk: And my parents are in the window of train. They said “Goodbye. We love you. Everything will be fine.” And I was crying. And we were all crying. I was thinking maybe I would need to take my suitcase and go back to my family because my heart was broken really.
Jon Wertheim: How did you overcome that? What– what– what made you not get off that train?
Polina Chepyk: Because it’s open door for me. It’s– a door for my dream.
Seventeen-year-old that she is, Polina documented the lonely odyssey on TikTok. Trains and buses. Five days and 1,200 miles. Kyiv to Lviv, Poland to Berlin. Finally, to Amsterdam where she landed at the Dutch National Ballet Academy, one of the leading schools in the world.
Jon Wertheim: When you got to the new school and started dancing again, how did that feel?
Polina Chepyk: Oh, I was very happy. Yes. I– my mind– changed. Because I was thinking about my parents all the time, for my family, for my sister. And when I go to the ballet class, the– this world changed for me. I have another world– a world of ballet.
Her adjustment was made easier when she found other Ukrainian dance students who, thanks to Larissa Saveliev, also found safe harbor in Amsterdam. Polina fell into a routine immediately. On the cusp of a professional career, she prepared for final exams. She was jittery beforehand. She emerged relieved, triumphant and eager to report back to mom.
Jon Wertheim: What did you tell her?
Polina Chepyk: That– I was nervous, but when I start– you– I do everything right.
Oleksii Potiomkin
If the war has made refugees out of some Ukrainian dancers, it’s made soldiers out of others. When the war began, Oleksii Potiomkin, a Principal Dancer with Ukraine’s National Ballet, turned in his tights for military fatigues. Here he is in downtown Lviv, having just returned from duty as a medic.
Jon Wertheim: What was your life like before the war?
Oleksii Potiomkin: Before war I must– I preparing– new premiere in ballet– Ukrainian ballet. You know, like, real, normal life. And just one moment it’s, like, changes. But I need to do something. I can’t sit just at home in shelter and watch TV, how my friends– die and– everyone do something.
Jon Wertheim: what have you seen these last few months?
Oleksii Potiomkin: Every day, it’s really scary. They crushed everything. Destroyed– houses– of civilians people. It’s brothers– son– fathers, sisters.
While he says he’s shaken by what he’s seen unfold on the battlefield, he’s also appalled by a war taking place on another front at the Bolshoi.
Oleksii Potiomkin: Like Bolshoi now, it’s toxic theater. Nobody want to work with you.
Jon Wertheim: You said toxic?
Oleksii Potiomkin: Toxic, yes. In Russia art, it’s politics. It’s– Russian government use– use it– ballet– it’s like weapon.
The weapon was deployed at the Bolshoi as recently as this past April when the theater revived a production of Spartacus in support of the Russian military invasion, unnerving many in the dance world, including longtime head of the Dutch National Ballet, Ted Brandsen.
Ted Brandsen: Well, it was a very– clear statement that “we have to support our boys who are on a military operation to save Ukraine from the Fascists.” Which is a totally ridiculous concept, of course.
Jon Wertheim: This allegory, Spartacus, about the– the slave revolt, is– is somehow being co-opted by–
Ted Brandsen: Yeah.
Jon Wertheim: The– the aggressive superpower?
Ted Brandsen: Absolutely. Now, it’s not– it’s not– it’s not for nothing that this became one of the signature ballets of the Soviet Emp– of the Soviet time..
Ted Brandsen
Abroad, the ballet community has staged benefit concerts to raise funds for Ukraine, while Russia’s famed companies, the Bolshoi and St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky, have had their touring dates canceled.
With the Iron Curtain down… artists have to pick a side. Alexei Ratmansky left Moscow for American Ballet Theatre in New York, where he is Artist in Residence, and where we spoke with him remotely this past April.
Jon Wertheim: It sounds like you– you don’t buy this idea that, look, individuals shouldn’t bear the responsibility for– for the acts of the state? That ar– artists should just be artists.
Alexei Ratmansky: No, I don’t think the artists are separate from politics. And besides, it’s not, for me it’s not politics. It’s about humanity. It’s about responding to war crimes, responding to the crimes of your government, of your president. It just made things clear which things are important and which aren’t. And you make a choice. You decide where you want to belong.
For Olga Smirnova, that choice came together in a matter of days after she condemned the war. She left Russia and landed on her feet at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, just around the corner from Polina’s school.
Jon Wertheim: It must have been incredibly difficult to leave the Bolshoi.
Olga Smirnova: If you make a choice, you have consequences. But, this is how it works. I had to leave everything. Like, my home, my theater, my repertoire, my partners, my parents, sister, brother, everything. But I don’t have regrets.
Jon Wertheim: No regrets.
Olga Smirnova: No. Because at least I can be honest with myself.
American philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, watched the story when it was first broadcast last year. His foundation granted more than a million dollars to help support the exiled Ukrainian dancers.
Produced by Michael H. Gavshon and Nadim Roberts. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Matthew Lev.
The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sought Sunday to tamp down speculation that the new GOP majority will be less likely to fund aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia, though he did suggest some members of his party may need to be convinced about the need to continue US support.
“I think there’s enough support on both sides of the aisle. Majority in the Democratic Party, majority in the Republican,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” referring to aid to Ukraine. But he added, “We have to educate our members. I don’t think they quite understand what’s at stake.”
“If Ukraine falls, Chairman Xi in China’s going to invade Taiwan. It’s Russia, China. Iran is putting drones in Crimea, and North Korea that is putting artillery into Russia. They have to understand the case. And they talk about the border, not mutually exclusive at all. We can do both. We’re a great country. We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” McCaul said.
Before capturing the House speakership, Rep. Kevin McCarthy said in October that Republicans might pull back funding for Ukraine if they took the House majority. But after making those comments, the GOP leader worked behind the scenes to reassure national security leaders in his conference that he wasn’t planning to abandon Ukraine aid and was just calling for greater oversight of any federal dollars.
But McCarthy is working with an incredibly thin majority, and senior congressional Republicans who support robustly funding Ukraine are watching warily as more isolationist-minded colleagues have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks that they will heavily scrutinize – if not outright oppose – US money for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reached a critical moment. Time is winnowing for the US and its allies to send more powerful weapons and to train Ukrainian soldiers how to use them before the second, possibly decisive, year of the war, which could see Russia launch a ferocious new offensive.
German officials have indicated they won’t send their Leopard tanks to Ukraine, or allow any other country with the German-made tanks in their inventory to do so, unless the US also agrees to send its M1 Abrams tanks to Kyiv – something the Pentagon has said for months it has no intention of doing given the logistical costs of maintaining them.
McCaul on Sunday suggested the United States should send the M1 Abrams tank to Ukraine, calling it a “game changer.”
Germany, he said, “won’t put one tank in until we give them reassurances we’re going to put our Abrams in. If we did that publicly, that would unleash so many Leopard tanks, because there are 10 other nations that are looking for Germany to sign off on the tanks that they have given them.”
A few kilometers from the Belarus border, Ukrainian forces are training for what they expect to be a brutal spring.
Ageing T-72 tanks – some twice the age of their crews – fire off rounds into the mist, while ground troops practise storming abandoned buildings. Some of the training takes place in the eerily quiet town of Pripyat, deserted since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
As the troops are put through their paces, Lieutenant General Serhiy Naiev takes delivery of a dozen pick-up trucks armed with heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, a crowd-funded initiative to help Ukraine repel Iranian-made Shahed drones, which have caused so much damage to Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
But Naiev, a stocky and affable commander, believes the next phase of this war will be about tanks. And that means not his ancient T-72s but more modern machines such as German Leopard 2s and British Challengers. Ukrainian officials say they need several hundred main battle tanks – not only to defend their present positions but also to take the fight to the enemy in the coming months.
“Of course, we need a large number of Western tanks. They are much better than the Soviet models and can help us advance,” Naiev said. “We are creating new military units. And our next actions will depend on their combat readiness. Therefore, Western assistance is extremely important.”
Chief among their requests is the Leopard 2, which is relatively easy to maintain and operate, and in service with many NATO nations. Both the military and political leadership in Ukraine were hoping that the Ramstein meeting of Ukraine’s partners on Friday would greenlight their delivery, but Germany held back.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, speaking after the meeting, said he and German counterpart Boris Pistorius “had a frank discussion on Leopard 2s … to be continued.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, told CNN Friday: “We are disappointed. We understand that some countries have inhibitions. But the slower this goes the more of our soldiers and civilians are killed.
“It would be significant if Germany took a leadership position here.”
He contends that “300 to 400 of these tanks, in fact, would outdo 2,000 to 3,000 Soviet-era tanks…It would sharply accelerate the tempo of the war and initiate the closing stages.”
In the meantime, Ukrainian officials say they are running out of spare parts for their existing Soviet-era tanks, even as they scour other former Soviet bloc states for supplies.
The Ukrainians fear that a second Russian offensive may begin within two months. By the spring, 150,000 Russians drafted last autumn will have been trained and probably incorporated into battle-ready units. For the Ukrainians, it’s a race against time. But they are essentially converting a military based on Soviet hardware to one using advanced western weapons at warp speed.
They won’t be getting M1 Abrams main battle tanks, which are powerful but difficult to maintain. Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy adviser, said of the M1 that it’s “expensive. It’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine.”
Experts also believe the German tanks could make a real difference. “Leopard 2 is a modern, well-protected main battle tank with good sensors,” Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow in Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told CNN.
“It was originally designed to be maintained by conscripts and is therefore simpler to keep in the fight than some other NATO designs like the Challenger 2. There is also an existing production line to keep Leopard 2s supplied with spare parts.”
But other weapons continue to flow in – Stryker armored vehicles and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles from the US, howitzers from Finland, the advanced ARCHER artillery system and anti-tank guns from Sweden.
The Ukrainian military has to train units on the new equipment and integrate it into its existing formations.
“The whole unit should be equipped with the same vehicle, so a whole battalion is equipped with Bradley, if we get it, or with Leopards,” Lieutenant-General Naiev told CNN.
Several senior Ukrainian officials have said that Ukraine wants to go on the front foot before Russia reinforces its lines and its battalion tactical groups. The front lines – all the way from the Russian border in the northeast to the Black Sea – have moved little since Ukrainian advances in Kharkiv and Kherson in the autumn.
Podolyak said rapid deliveries of modern tanks would localize the war. “It wouldn’t spread, but remain on the occupied territories and be decided with tank warfare.”
Ukraine needs tanks to clear occupied land quickly, but also longer-range missiles, Podolyak said. He expects the Russians are “going to bring in a lot more troops, a lot of old Soviet equipment, everything, according to our estimates, that they have left.”
The Russians appear to be trying to reduce the vulnerability of their ammunition stocks and troops concentrations by placing them further away from the frontlines, perhaps even beyond the range of US HIMARS systems that Ukraine has used effectively against such targets.
The list of hardware that the Ukrainians want seems ever-expanding, but Podolyak responds: “Our guys aren’t leaving the battlefield, even if they aren’t provided with new weaponry. They’ll just die more often and with greater regularity.
“I understand that some countries may feel tired of this war,” Podolyak told CNN.
“But we are the ones whose are paying the real price for freedom. We are the ones whose people are dying because of Russian aggression.”
