Conor here: John Helmer details another German general trying to hit the brakes on Berlin’s support for Ukraine before the train goes completely off the tracks.
Unfortunately, retired Major General Harald Kujat’s claims have been ignored in the US and in Germany. That Kujat says the US media have been less deceptive in their reporting of the war than the German press really gives you an idea of how bad the censorship is there.
Wolfgang Streeck wrote recently in New Left Review about how stifling the environment has become:
In other respects as well, the corridor of the sayable is rapidly, and frighteningly, narrowing. As with the destruction of the pipelines, the strongest taboos relate to the role of the United States, both in the history of the conflict and in the present. In admissible public speech, the Ukrainian war – which is expected to be termed ‘Putin’s war of aggression’ (Angriffskrieg) by all loyal citizens – becomes entirely de-contextualized: it has no history outside of the ‘narrative’ of a decade-long brooding of a mad dictator in the Kremlin over how to best wipe out the Ukrainian people, facilitated by the stupidity, combined with greed, of the Germans falling for his cheap gas. As this writer found out when an interview he had given to the online edition of a centre-right German weekly, Cicero, was cut without consultation, among what is not to be mentioned in polite German society are the American rejection of Gorbachev’s ‘Common European Home’, the subversion within the United States of Clinton’s project of a ‘Partnership for Peace’, and the rebuff as late as 2010 of Putin’s proposal of a European free trade zone ‘from Lisbon to Vladivostok’. Equally unmentionable is the fact that by the mid-1990s at the latest, the United States had decided that the border of post-communist Europe should be identical to the western border of post-communist Russia, which would also be the eastern border of NATO, to the west of which there were to be no restrictions whatsoever on the stationing of troops and weapons systems. The same holds for the extensive American strategic debates on ‘extending Russia’, as documented in publicly accessible working papers of the RAND Corporation.
More examples of the publicly unsayable include the historically unprecedented arms build-up on the part of the United States during the ‘war on terror’, accompanied by the unilateral termination of all remaining arms control agreements with the Soviet Union of old; the unrelenting American pressure on Germany to replace Russian natural gas with American liquid natural gas after the invention of fracking, culminating in the American decision long before the war to close down Nord stream 2, one way or other; the peace negotiations that preceded the war, including the Minsk agreements between Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, negotiated by among others the then German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which fell apart under pressure from the Obama administration and its special envoy for US-Ukrainian relations, the then Vice President Joe Biden, coinciding with a radicalization of Ukrainian nationalism.
Helmer also makes an important point about the military-industrial complex in Germany and weapons companies’ alliance with the war-mongering Green Party. In a separate post today, we look at the Green (and specifically foreign minister Baerbock) efforts to increase Germany’s involvement in the Ukraine war.
By John Helmer who has been the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to have directed his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
A fresh German general has issued a public warning that the war on the Ukrainian battlefield by the US and NATO armies is lost, and that Germany will be lost next if the advance of the Russian forces toward Kiev and Lvov isn’t halted quickly by an armistice, partition and demilitarization of the Ukraine, and time to rebuild the German army.
Retired Major General Harald Kujat — son of a Wehrmacht soldier killed fighting the Red Army who grew up to become chief of the German army and then of the NATO military staffs — is the author of a military assessment in which he blames the German press, ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, British prime minister Boris Johnson, and other NATO allies he doesn’t name for a new German version of the stab in the back .
In this scheme, according to Kujat, the NATO allies have aimed at sabotaging Germany’s power in Europe. This is being carried out, he said, by escalating the “risk of a conventional attack on Germany”, and “pursuing the goal of exposing Germany to Russia in particular”. Without explicitly targeting the US, Kujat blames Washington for establishing a direct nuclear threat to Russia in the Aegis missile batteries now installed in Poland and Romania; for making Germany a direct party to the war in the Ukraine by allowing “the US [to] train Ukrainian soldiers in Germany”; and for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany.
Kujat’s assessment was published in Switzerland on January 18; German publication followed on January 20. Attacked in the past by mainstream German media, and by US government officials, Kujat’s new statement has been ignored in Germany and the US.
“The longer the war lasts, the greater the risk of expansion or escalation,” Kujat warned, adding the German army, German territorial security, and German industrial might will be the loser because “Russia could surpass the Western escalation at any time with its own.” Kujat meant this to include the use of nuclear weapons.
Kujat is the most senior German officer to make public an attack on the German and allied war to defeat Russia in Europe.
He follows Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, head of the German Navy, who was forced to resign in January 2022, after a public speech in which he said that “the Crimea Peninsula is gone: It will never come back — this is a fact”; and that Russian security concerns should be addressed with “respect”. “What [Putin] really wants is respect. And, my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost. … It is easy to give him the respect he really demands — and probably also deserves.”
After Schönbach’s ouster, no serving German officers have dared to risk public criticism of the war policy in Germany. Instead, they are expressing themselves through retired officers. Brigadier General Erich Vad, the ex-head of the military group in Merkel’s chancellery, issued a detailed attack earlier this month; read the details here.
Referring to the resistance by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to sending German Leopard tanks to the Ukraine, Kujat says “the debate over the supply of certain weapons systems clearly shows the intention of many media outlets to make policy themselves. It may be that my unease about this development is a consequence of my many years of service in NATO, including as chairman of the NATO-Russia Council and the NATO-Ukraine Commission of Chiefs of Staff. I find it particularly annoying that German security interests and the dangers to our country posed by an expansion and escalation of the war are given so little attention. This shows a lack of responsibility or, to use an old-fashioned term, a highly unpatriotic attitude.”
Kujat claims to “have always believed that this war must be prevented and that it could have been prevented”. That this has not been the outcome he blames on Merkel for her policy of deceiving Russia, calling that “a blatant breach of trust” and “a breach of international law, that is clear.”
The turning point in the Russian-German security balance of forces began in Washington in 2002, Kujat says, when US President George W. Bush cancelled the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, and then in 2008 when Bush “tried to push through an invitation from Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO”. The Obama Administration’s decision in 2009 to deploy “NATO’s ballistic missile defense system in Poland and Romania” was a new escalation “because Russia is convinced that the US could also eliminate Russian intercontinental strategic systems from these launch Facilities and thus endanger the nuclear strategic balance.”
Germany’s survival is imperiled by this nuclear imbalance, according to Kujat, because Russian nuclear arms are now directly threatened by the US, and by the escalation of conventional US and NATO weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield. “You have to reckon with that. The longer the war lasts, the greater the risk of expansion or escalation. [Question: We already had this in the Cuban Missile Crisis?] It was a comparable situation.”
Like Vad, Kujat has been obliged to publish through a small-circulation Zurich magazine, Zeitgeschehen im Fokus (“Current Events in Focus”), and then in an obscure German publication based in Frankfurt; called Overton, an English revolutionary name, this magazine reveals nothing about itself except that it is “a voice against debate constriction and moralism. It questions the general narratives and is decidedly not an ideological mouthpiece or organ of pronouncement, but feels committed to the Enlightenment.” Vad published his military analysis in Emma, a Cologne feminist magazine.
Vad was explicit in his criticism of Merkel and the current German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock. Despite being asked about her in his interview, Kujat avoids attacking Baerbock by name. He also claims the US media have been less deceptive in their reporting of the war than the German press, citing an “article in Foreign Affairs…by Fiona Hill, a former senior White House National Security Council official. She is very competent and absolutely reliable.”
Kujat blames the British, not the Americans, for disrupting the ceasefire terms he believes the Kremlin was ready to sign following the Istanbul negotiations at the end of March 2022. Follow what happened in Moscow and in Istanbul at the time in this report.
In Kujat’s version, “Russia had apparently [sic] agreed to withdraw its forces to the level of February 23, i.e. before the attack on Ukraine began. Now the complete withdrawal is repeatedly demanded as a prerequisite for negotiations… Ukraine had pledged to renounce NATO membership and not to allow any foreign troops or military installations to be stationed. In return, it should receive security guarantees from states of its choice. The future of the occupied territories should be resolved diplomatically within 15 years, with the explicit renunciation of military force… According to reliable information [sic], the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened in Kiev on 9th April and prevented a signing. His reasoning was that the West was not ready for an end to the war.”
Kujat did not reveal the “apparent” and “reliable” sources for his claims. He also appears to signal that US officials were not behind Johnson’s action, and what Kujat also calls President Vladimir Zelensky’s “repeatedly chang[ing] the strategic objectives of Ukrainian warfare”.
Kujat has misrepresented and misreported Hill’s role in escalating US war aims against Russia for several years; for evidence of this, click to read the archive. Kujat has done the same in claiming Johnson, not US officials, have controlled Zelensky.
Like Vad earlier this month, Kujat appeals to the Pentagon, US military officers, and US weapons makers to stop the escalation of the war on the Ukrainian battlefield as Russian strategic objectives harden, and the tactical defeat of US, German and NATO weapons becomes inevitable. “According to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley,” Kujat says, “Ukraine has achieved what it could achieve militarily. More is not possible. That is why diplomatic efforts should be made now to achieve a negotiated peace. I share this view… it is questionable whether the Ukrainian armed forces still have a sufficient number of suitable soldiers to be able to use these weapons systems in view of the large losses of recent months. In any case, [Ukrainian Chief of Staff General Valery] Zaluzhny’s statement also explains why Western arms supplies do not enable Ukraine to achieve its military objectives, but only prolong the war. In addition, Russia could surpass the Western escalation at any time with its own. In the German discussion, these connections are not understood or ignored. The way in which some [sic] allies are trying to publicly urge the federal government to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks also plays a role. This has not happened in NATO so far. It shows how much Germany’s reputation in the alliance has suffered as a result of the weakening of the Bundeswehr and the commitment with which some allies are pursuing the goal of exposing Germany to Russia in particular.”
Kujat implies that Chancellor Olaf Scholz is being secretly pressured by the US for reasons Kujat does not want to reveal now — except for his hint that the Americans and British aim to weaken Germany politically in Europe, and supplant the German arms industry with their own companies. “The current efforts of the USA to induce the Europeans to supply further arms may have something to do with this situation. A distinction must be made between the publicly expressed reasons and the concrete decisions of the Federal Government. It would go too far [sic] to go into the whole spectrum of this discussion. However, I would like the Federal Government to receive really competent advice on this issue and – perhaps even more importantly – to be receptive and capable of judgement in accordance with the importance of this issue.”
Kujat also omits to mention Baerbock’s and the Green Party’s alliance with Germany’s aerospace and defence industry to secure Green votes in Kiel, Dusseldorf, Munich, and other city and state (Bundesland) electorates where the Greens aim to draw large vote swings from the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Kiel is home to Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Maschinenbau, builder of the Leopard tank. In the Kiel parliamentary vote of 2021, the Greens gained almost 14% to score 28% of the total, while the SDP lost ground but held on to the seat with 29.5%. Just over two thousand votes separated them. The anti-war Left and Alliance for Germany (AfD) candidates lost ground in Kiel, ending up with 5% and just over 7,000 votes each. In Dusseldorf, headquarters for the Rheinmetall group, the Greens gained 13% in 2021 from the SDP and CDU, losing narrowly to the CDU. Similar vote switches to the Greens were recorded in Essen and Duisburg, where Thyssen-Krupp directs its military industrial complex.
Kujat’s links to these leading German arms makers are indicated by his chairmanship of the advisory council of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, an association of US, German and other European weapons makers. For more on the prospects of the German corporations he and the consortium represent, read this.
Kujat is warning that defeat of the US and NATO by the Russian forces in the Ukraine puts the future profitability of this business in jeopardy. “This is the current situation in which modern Western weapons systems are used in the Ukraine war. In December, Russia launched an extensive program to evaluate the technical and operational-tactical parameters of captured Western weapons, which should increase the effectiveness of its own operations and weapon effectiveness.”
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“All is not Well for Ukraine”, from Stephen Bryen (formerly DoD & Capitol Hill staffer, according to his bio).
https://asiatimes.com/2023/01/all-is-not-well-for-ukraine/
I’ve commented before on my love of the movie “Inception”. The metaphor here is that like the dream-within-a-dream levels the protagonists of the movie inflicted on their victims, the deepest levels of illusion have now begun to crumble. Time to signal that the “kick” is nigh … #TimeToWakeUp
Enjoy! (via YouTube)
If we run with that metaphor, though, it rather seems like the neocons who set this conflict into motion are perhaps trapped in Limbo.
As a sign of fragmenting support in Germany for Banderastan, this is good to see, but the mention of “stabs in the back” by a German military officer somehow brings up all that, er, extreme unpleasantness in Europe in the 1940’s and 40’s…
1930’s and 1940’s… sorry
Since it’s obvious I’ll go with ‘stab-in-the-front’ or mysteriously stabbed on the ocean floor.
Thanks very much for this, Conor.
On the generals publishing in obscure places, I am reminded how Sy H-ersh had to go to Europe to publish. A couple years ago I heard an interview with him and recall that he was concerned about his children. He is now 85 and may have gone dark.
The Stab in the Back story in Germany serves the same purpose there as the conspiracy theory label does here in the USA.
I would like to point out that it makes a great bit of difference in the medium and long term, whether one’s country is actually suffering a back-stabbing, and of course, by whom.
The future fuhrer was wrong, and in retrospect, it is obvious that he was lying for political advantage, OTOH, the general is right, and it seems obvious IMO, that he is motivated by an honest love of his country.
Calling the general’s analysis a ‘stab-in-the-back’ story is calling it a politically motivated fabricatiion.
You may be correct about current back-stabbings, but he introduced an emotionally and historically-charged phrase, not me, and now you’re trying to put it in my mouth. So… no. It’s his shortcoming if he didn’t reckon with the phrase’s connotations, if indeed he would care at all.
And we can safely assume his dad, who was killed while invading Russia, also had an honest love of country, too. But that’s really not the point, then or now.
Where’s the fabrication? He said it, and even if he’s right about who’s betraying whom, he used a very politically and historically-charged phrase (especially coming from a German general), and it’s fair he should reckon with the connotations of it.
And I’m sure his father, who died while invading Russia, was also motivated by an honest love of country, though in the grand scheme of things that doesn’t count for much, since the people pressing for more war feel likewise; very few warmongers describe themselves as such.
If nothing else, using the phrase is tactically foolish, as it provides an opening for those pushing for war to smear him.
I’m glad the man is speaking out, and respect the courage it takes for him to do so, given the political climate and the circles he moves in, but words matter.
the title was seriously unclear… Helmer has needed an editor since forever.
The Stab in the Back story I am pretty sure originated with a British reporter who was interviewing a German general after the end of WW1. The German general was trying to articulate why the Germans collapsed and lost the war but was stumbling over how to express himself when the British reporter helpfully asked him if he meant that Germany was stabbed in the back. With that, it was like a revelation for that German general and who seized on it and it is said that that phrase spread from there.
Think it’s a ‘stab in the front’ now, in plain sight.
It looks like the Green Party was created and promoted by us to disrupt the old German conservative consensus and to sell off their own military industrial complex to “NATO”. Michael Hudson saw this coming. Kujat even dares to call out the British, or rather Boris Johnson who was out of office when he did his Ukrainian whistle stop. The fact that Annalena Baerbock was so unceremoniously dumped is more telling than the Generals and Merkel. I think the whole picture is like multiple stab wounds. It is good to see Germany calling it out. It would be interesting to see NATO come up with an excuse to occupy one of its own members.
I don’t think Baerbohasck has been dumped. She is still Foreign Minister.
They seem to be standing up to her.
Germany has been occupied since 1945 by various nations, but France, the UK and Russia dropped out, while for all of that time the US always been there, with nuclear warheads.
Yeah the whole green ideology, at least the variant i have seen more locally, is deeply contradictory. It seems to believe it can maintain present urban consumerism while pivoting away from fossil fuels.
A move that will downright devastate the rural areas, and massively disrupt the food supply chain. Because not only do farm machinery run on diesel, but fertilizer production use natural gas as a starting point.
The ideology seem like a child of the MBA willful ignorance of supply lines. As if cities do not have tendrils of supply reaching around the world, carried by plane, ship and truck.
Well, you can absolutely maintain a high consumption lifestyle in a country and switch to mainly green energy sources. What you cannot do with the current levels of technology is continue consuming as we are, with the supply chain we have, and allow a large percentage of the population to enjoy that same lifestyle. But if you can keep a large part of the world poor, depress wages globally in your servant class, and manage to enforce unfettered flow of capital and goods cross borders so that you can outsource the energy intensive industries to places you don’t care about…you can enjoy the wealthiest lifestyle ever recorded on planet earth and imagine yourself you’re a good person. And if your media is well trained enough, you might even believe it!
WTF is going on in Ukraine?
* Defenestration of Alexei ‘Bakhmut Bob’ Arestovich
* Helicopter carrying top 3 interior ministry goes down in flames.
* Major resignations among top officials with stories of corruption clean ups.
* A ban on gov’t officials leaving the country.
* Recent visit from CIA and BoJo
* Offensive/Feint/Extraction* operation in Zapo
* Impending encirclement of Bakhmut
Did I miss some? It seems like some faction is getting purged, the helicopter incident included speculation about a turf war between military and secret police branches, with the latter in the chopper all together… going somewhere.
* Dima at MilitarySummary noted a report of 2 AFU ‘officers’ surrendering there and posited that they were being extracted with the bombshell (sorry) information that HIMARS missiles would be stored at nuclear plants, so they couldn’t be hit. I find it strange that you would need a story and dudes with a white flag as the optimum cover for a covert extraction, but things are indeed strange.
Mercouris speaks about the purge and points out how it happened just after a visit by the CIA’s William Burns (who as late as 2019 was warning against NATO expansion).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XtrMST9iDQ
A good article by Alastair Crooke that also gives a shout to Yves:
https:// strategic – culture . org / news /2023 / 01 / 23 / the-most-egregious-mistake/
The USA also has an ideology that wants to destroy people’s sense of place, even their sense of reality of being so that banks and corporations can operate as the ultimate beings in the world, with no borders for them.
People are regulated to borders, only allowed to move if they can fit into the machinery of a corporation.
Anyone who wants to stay in place or have community with those around them constantly have the rug pulled out from under them through crisis – real and manufactured.
“Nationalism” is okay when it’s rallying around a corporations cause or “interests” and outside of that all that is offered is precarity.
I think this article gets to an important point. The great outsourcing of American industry cannot be “replaced” by Wall St no matter how you juggle the numbers. Even if the re-shoring of industry proceeds at full speed, America has lost its industrial know how for at least a generation.
All Ukraine is doing is exposing that the real paper tiger is America and the west.
Yep. According to the New York Times today, “the Army’s top acquisition official says production of the 155-millimeter shells badly needed by Kyiv will rise to 90,000 a month” … in two years, and that might be optimistic
There’s only one RDX/HDE plant in the US that I know of. And it was built during WWII. Commercial blasting is mostly ANFO (mostly produced by international companies operating in the US, Dyno). I’m going to say 90k shells/month in less than two years is very optimistic. And once it’s up and running at those levels, it will still take more than a year to replace just what’s been officially given. I don’t know if the official numbers include the 300k from Israeli stockpiles.
Throwing in this column from Oskar Lafontaine, formerly candidate for chancellor, now retired (but married to Ms Wagenknecht), on an obscure website:
https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=92944
There is not much hope for dissenting voices.
Read it in awful machine translation version. Nice to see that Lafontaine keeps sanity in this environment though sad to see that 3 major German parties are all in in this idiocy.
This article is unsettling. It suggests attacks on arms shipments were stopped. There are conflicting assessments from pro-Russia articles, telegram, etc.
https://reseauinternational.net/larmee-russe-peut-elle-etre-submergee-par-le-flux-darmes-occidentales-deversees-sur-le-front/
Well . . . it depends what the RussiaGov wants to achieve for now. The more UkraNATO weapons get shipped to the front, the fewer weapons the UkraNATO forces have left over in the rear for future use. If the Russia military planners are confident that they can destroy all the weapons and weapons systems that NATO sends to the front, then Russia might be willing to let its front line suffer for a while in exchange for draining NATO weapon reserves closer to zero.
If that is what the Russia planners are thinking, and if they can achieve it, then they would halfway downmilitarize NATO itself as well as demilitarizing Ukraine. For such a long term prize, short term insecurity for Russia’s conquered Oblasts in East Ukraine might be an okay tradeoff. And if so, then why not let UkraNATO successfully ship all that materiel to the front across undamaged bridges?
Just speculating, of course.
That’s a positive assessment, thanks.
There may also be something deeply emotional for the Russian population when the German tanks roll again across Ukraine towards Russian lines. At least that’s how it will be presented to make the separation of Russia from Europe and West a generational thing.
I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody like Medvedev will start to talk about the need to demilitarize Germany. Again.
I feel like Ukraine + Covid has been such a wild ride as so much of the geopolitical factions have been brought right out in front of ours to see. I think one perspective I have found refreshing is Tom Luongo, who gives a compelling case about who was behind the Nordstream bombing. He certainly says they couldn’t do it without the Neocons support but that it was really the British/Polish who spearheaded Nordstrom bombing:
https://tomluongo.me/2022/09/29/the-curious-whodunit-of-nordstreams-1-and-2/
The general in this article slightly supports this, as Boris Johnson brokering some sort of deals to keep Zelensky motivated. “Kujat blames the British, not the Americans, for disrupting the ceasefire terms he believes the Kremlin was ready to sign following the Istanbul negotiations at the end of March 2022.”
As long as we are not drug into WW3, Ukraine could be a good thing from a certain perspective. It could be the hill the Neocons/City of London/Davos Crowd dies on. Ukraine is clearly driving a more nationalist sentiment among its population, which will help strip their overlords of power. Meanwhile, on another “front” the globalist’s are being hammered right now by King Powell buckling down on raising rates. The Eurodollar market and LIBOR are being absolutely hammered. That is one topic I feel like is extremely important right now and should be looked at more here at NC. Last time I see LIBOR mentioned was 2018? I know we all hate Powell but he could actually be our friend right now. Certainly the rise in the rates will bring more of our government spending into the minds of congressman who are actually fiscally conservative (pretend or not) as the defense spending is the largest ticket item. I expect this will very soon bring some more “politicization” to the fed. Trump opened that door for Biden and Crew to axe Powell if they want to go that way. Obviously wishful thinking on my part would be curious to know other peoples thoughts.
John Helmer: Without explicitly targeting the US, Kujat blames Washington for establishing a direct nuclear threat to Russia in the Aegis missile batteries now installed in Poland and Romania; for making Germany a direct party to the war in the Ukraine by allowing “the US [to] train Ukrainian soldiers in Germany”; and for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany.
——————————————————————————
Here’s what Kujat actually says about the Nordstream attack in the interview (Google translation):
Do you have an opinion on the [Nordstream] blast?
No, that would be pure speculation. There is circumstantial evidence, as is so often the case, but no proof. At least none that have become public knowledge. But you can be absolutely sure: the sun will bring it to light.
Watching all of this continues to be surreal. Now it is being reported that M1A1 Abrams will be sent.
But why???? They can’t even maintain one simple system. Now they’re going to need parts and trained people to service two? Madness.
And I thought the specs for the M1A1 made it a particularly bad choice for this theater?
Many more than two. Three just in this tranche (Challengers, Leopards, Abrams) just for tanks. Plus the original T64s and T80s, the M55s from Slovenia, and T72s of various model that they’ve received in earlier tranches.
As Social Jim notes below, seven IFVs and seven AFVs on top, at a minimum. Brian Berletic has covered this at length, the logistics of this cobbled together army are impossible even for highly trained professionals with plenty of time and money and no-one shooting at them.
And yes, the Abrams, Challenger, and Leopard are ill-suited to Ukraine. Too heavy, bad track-surface-to-weight ratio for snow and mud, and too dependent on regular back-line repair and maintenance.
Not to mention that the Leopards are supposed to come from 14 different armies, with at least 31 years of use in their log books. So there’s likely to be multiple different levels of upgrades, adjustments and repairs done on them alone.
Of course, the expected lifetime of these tanks in Ukraine is probably too short for that to became a major issue.
Will these perform any better than the ones in Syria?
The Guardian:
Reuters has produced a quick guide to which countries are poised to send tanks to Ukraine, with an announcement from the US and Germany expected later today.
US: officials say Washington is poised to send dozens of its M1 Abrams battle tank, reversing its previous position.
Germany: sources say the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has decided to send Leopard 2 battle tanks. He will also allow other countries to send theirs, they say.
UK: the British government announced on 14 January that it would send a squadron, or 14, of its Challenger 2 battle tanks.
Poland: Warsaw has said it is ready to send up to 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks and has been pressing Berlin to approve the move.
Norway: the government is considering whether to send some of its Leopard tanks, newspapers reported.
Finland: has said it could donate a small number of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine if a wider group of European nations also decided to do so, but it would depend on Berlin’s approval.
I have just read that Spain will also send a few Leopard 2 though everybody knows these need comprehensive reparations and maintenance. The word is contribute, be involved, be implicated, take a bath in the mud all together. That is all about it: the US wants the circus to keep united, no cracks there. Why? To be ready for next escalation and support it. Like, let’s say, NATO official boots in the ground. What a shame. What a bunch of sheep in Europe.
Spain will join moves by European nations to make Leopard tanks available to Ukraine, the El País newspaper reported –Bloomberg
It really looks like they’re just throwing a few units into the fray to gather combat performance data.
Also mentioned on the Duran:
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/01/will-m1-abrams-and-leopard-2-tanks-win-the-war-for-ukraine/
“In contrast, we are asking Ukraine, locked in a life-and-death struggle with an invading Russian army, to become proficient with no fewer than seven Western IFV types and at least seven classes of infantry vehicles of Soviet origin. Consider the practical ramifications and the nightmares this would build into their system. ”
Duh, it’s pretty simple. There’s no need for training, the tanks will come with American/German/French/etc “consultants”.
cool. faster to deploy.
…and faster to die on the battlefield.
Greens are backing fracking. DSA, like Fetterman… backing fracking. Russia can not be beat, in an open market & can ship LNG across the Arctic at far lower price than fracked US gas. So, basically nobody’s asking why Greens are in such a hurry, to set off run-away AGW (by incentivizing tens-of-thousands of non-competitive planet killing; air, water & food poisoning fracked wells), joined by that OTHER reactionary, oilgarchs’ party in 2024, releasing exponentially more methane, essentially we’re all playing Russian roulette with a double-barrelled 8-gauge. Nobody seems interested, in the least?
John Helmer´s take is really irritating. I have no time to refute all the points he gets wrong about the interview
and Germany except one: General Kujat nowhere I repeat nowhere mentions some stab in the back perpetrated against Germany. I don´t know which shitty translation tool he uses. The best in my view (and I once did German English translation for a living) is deepl.
Finally about General Kujat: he is from East Prussia and his family witnessed the whole horror of expulsion, war and starvation. As strange as it may sound to Mr. Helmer, who is from a luckier country: yes there are indeed Germans who are against a new war not for some nefarious selfish reasons but because they saw war themselves. And yes, this entire generation (my parents were the same) were all hoping for a new European security architecture that by all means included Russia. That was the life´s work of General Kujat and he sees it being pissed away by people like Baerbock and the neo cons in Washington.