Germany and the USA want to deliver around 90 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine. According to military expert Gressel, this will improve the offensive capabilities of the Ukrainian army noticeably. On the other hand, he cannot understand the arguments with which Berlin is holding back battle tanks.
According to military expert Gustav Gressel, the decision by Germany and the USA to supply armored personnel carriers to Ukraine is of great value. “The ‘Marder’ and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles are very, very good vehicles – far better than anything the Ukrainians had before,” said Gressel, who researches at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), to ntv.de. “It starts with the optics, goes through the armor protection and mobility to the weapon systems. These are really quantum leaps, technically and qualitatively.”
Ukraine now has enough soldiers. “The problem is this is all infantry on foot or infantry on light four-wheel drive vehicles and these are difficult to use for attacks.” Without mobile protection for the foot soldiers, the infantry could be used in solid defensive positions, but hardly in offensives or in so-called delaying battles, Gresssel explained. At the same time, Ukraine is preparing “for a new Russian offensive in the spring because it expects the 200,000 mobilized forces that are still in Russia to attack from other directions – for example from the north or in the Kharkiv area could.” In addition, Kyiv is prepared for further rounds of mobilization in Russia to follow.
The war was not won with the delivery of the “Marder” and Bradley tanks, said Gressel. “But that is at least the prerequisite for surviving the Russian spring offensive and then still having the clout to liberate terrain again in the spring.” In addition, Germany and the USA have not yet reached the end of their possibilities with the decision to supply a total of around 90 infantry fighting vehicles. “Of course there are more Bradleys in the USA and there are also more ‘Marders’ in Germany,” said Gressel. “Then you can always deliver a little later.”
The most recent decisions in Washington and Berlin have fueled demands – including from the parliamentary groups of the governing coalition – to supply Ukraine with Leopard-type main battle tanks. Gressel can imagine that the decision to supply German “Leopard” tanks will follow a similar pattern. “I guess it will be similar with the main battle tanks: that at some point an American Abrams tank will roll over the Ukrainian border and then the ‘Leopard’ will come,” said Gressel. First of all, Poland will be supplied with the US tanks, then Ukraine can follow. The Chancellor’s most important argument, to only supply battle tanks in conjunction with other partner countries, would not apply in this scenario.
Gressel showed a lack of understanding in view of Germany’s refusal to deliver the “Leopard 1” to the Ukraine, which was on hold in the industry. The federal government hides in the debate again and again behind different classifications of combat equipment. A “Leopard 1” is much more comparable to the French AMX-10 reconnaissance tanks, which President Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday, than to a modern battle tank.
“It says ‘battle tank’ on the label, but that’s a development from the 1960s and early 1970s, when armor protection wasn’t a top priority because it was thought at the time that any high-power shell would penetrate any tank anyway,” explains Gressel. “However, the ‘Leopard 1’ would not be used in today’s battlefield as a battle tank, but as a tank destroyer, as a reconnaissance vehicle, as a general fire support vehicle – and not for direct tank duels.”
