Is Germany the only option to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine?
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Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former producer and correspondent for CNN, is a world affairs columnist.
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(CNN) --
The war in Ukraine could get worse very soon.
Russia may be preparing to launch a major spring offensive, and it could arrive even before the winter snow begins to melt.
The time to give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself and drive out the Russian invaders is now.
But despite a remarkably unified compromise, some of Ukraine's supporters in the West are standing in the way.
Ukraine believes the Kremlin could make another effort to seize the capital, Kyiv, and expects Russian President Vladimir Putin to call up some 500,000 more troops, on top of the 300,000 mobilized late last year.
ANALYSIS |
Faced with an imminent Russian offensive, Ukraine struggles to train its military with new Western weapons
Moscow denies that it is planning a second mobilization, but the independent Russian outlet Volya, citing Russian military sources, reported that Moscow plans to recruit another 700,000 troops.
In addition, Ukraine is also facing more than 50,000 private army mercenaries, most of them Russian prisoners released in exchange for fighting.
On Friday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared: "This is a defining moment for Ukraine, in a defining decade for the world," following a crucial meeting of Ukraine's main Western allies at the Ukraine airbase. Ramstein, Germany.
Ukraine is fighting a Russia that has been a pernicious and destabilizing force on the world stage.
The West tries to gauge its support, but the outcome of the Ramstein meeting was disappointing for Kyiv and those who believe Russia must be defeated.}
Austin reiterated that the United States will continue to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes," and urged Kyiv's allies to "go even deeper."
Despite the exhortations, however, the defense chiefs failed in one of the main goals of the meeting, deciding to send main battle tanks, which Ukraine says it needs without delay.
The decision on main battle tanks was blocked by Germany, reluctant to send its Leopard 2 tanks or grant permission to other countries that own them to hand them over.
Berlin fears that Moscow will regard the presence of German tanks as a provocation and wants the United States to send its tanks to provide cover.
Germany does not give in on sending tanks to Ukraine.
Why is the Leopard 2 tank so important?
Washington is sending armored fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons, but maintains that its Abrams tanks are not suitable for this war because they take too long to learn and are difficult to maintain.
They insist that German tanks are more suitable.
Blocking the transfer of necessary arms to Ukraine is not, let's say, Germany's best behavior.
Supporters of Ukraine in Eastern Europe, invaded by Russia during the Cold War and before, were furious.
Poland's foreign minister lashed out at Germany, reminding Berlin that this is not just an exercise, "Ukrainian blood is really spilled."
The three Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, demanded that Germany act "now".
A frustrated Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, declared: "There is no rational reason why Ukraine has not yet received Western tanks."
While fighting Russian soldiers and mercenaries, Ukraine has another concern.
A Ukrainian source told CNN that Kyiv is concerned about the shift in the political balance in Washington now that Republicans, some of whom do not wholeheartedly support Ukraine, have seized control of the US House of Representatives.
The Ukrainians need to continue to receive strong support from Washington.
Watching from afar, it's easy to get the impression that Putin might soon end his ill-fated war in Ukraine.
After all, this conflict has been a complete disaster for Russia, even though it continues to kill dozens of civilians by bombing residential buildings, and despite one or two symbolic advances.
Putin has no intention of stopping.
He has silenced his liberal critics at home, but is under pressure from far-right nationalists, including some who own mercenary armies and flaunt their prowess while mocking the Russian army answering to him, as Yevgeny Prigozhin has done, who runs the infamous Wagner Group.
Furthermore, Putin, who considers himself a skilled student of history, may be looking at some of Russia's greatest victories, ripped from the jaws of defeat.
"They have us on the ropes": why the US and Germany fail to agree to send tanks to Ukraine
Russia managed to repel invasions by Napoleon and the Nazis, but the nation's current president may have drawn the wrong lesson from the exploits of his predecessors.
Napoleon and Hitler were the invaders.
The Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, fought back.
This time, Russia is the aggressor.
Ukraine has home-field advantage, including an inexhaustible determination to defeat the hated invader.
In fact, history teaches us something else: in 2008, Putin invaded neighboring Georgia and got away with capturing part of its territory.
In 2014, he invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and got away with it.
Then last year he decided to take all of Ukraine.
The lesson is that when the Kremlin's expansionist military adventures are successful, they are followed by more aggression, more wars, more illegal annexations of its neighbors' territory.
Moscow's victories seem to produce more wars of Russian aggression.
Defeating this assault is the best way to ensure future peace, to reaffirm the notion that a rapacious country cannot simply swallow a peaceful neighbor, a notion that we thought was over after World War II.
It is understandable that Germany emerged from that war with a pacifist bent.
But the lesson of World War II is the danger of allowing aggressive despots to profit.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz may be hesitant to send tanks to fight Russia, as Germany did in the 1940s, but he, too, may be drawing on the wrong lessons of history.
So, German tanks invaded a sovereign country.
This time, they would be defending one.
Some, in fact, argue that the experience of World War II confers on Germany a unique moral responsibility to provide Kyiv with what it needs.
(By the way, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, they invaded the Ukraine, one of its republics.)
After the defense ministers in Ramstein announced that they had not decided to send tanks, a clearly disappointed Zelensky reaffirmed that Ukraine badly needs tanks, but added an intriguing comment about what had happened.
"Not everything," he said, "can be announced in public."
Sooner or later, I have little doubt, the tanks will arrive.
Germany's Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has already commissioned an inventory of the Leopards and has suggested that other countries that own them start making preparations in case Germany authorizes the transfer.
Better late than never, but there is no reason or excuse to delay, because Russia is about to make the war in Ukraine even deadlier.
The window to avoid a much longer war may close soon.
war in ukraine