Almost a year after the invasion of Russia, Washington is about to announce a new mega package of military aid to the forces of Kiev , as pressure grows on Germany to send tanks after the decision of Great Britain and Poland to move their tanks.
Moscow is bitter: supplies of new arms to Ukraine by the West - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quoted by Tass says - can take the conflict to a new level .
The Biden administration has so far supplied more than a million 155mm shells but Kiev forces fire at least 90,000 a month, about double the amount produced in both the United States and Europe. Hence the reliance on "emergency stockpiles" in Israel created after the 1973 Yom Kippur War .
According to the New York Times, the Pentagon has had to overcome initial resistance from Israel which, since the beginning of the conflict, has refrained from supplying arms to Kiev so as not to jeopardize its relations with Russia. A phone call between Secretary Lloyd Austin and then Defense Minister Benny Gantz would have been decisive.
In the coming days, most likely on Friday at the contact group meeting at the Ramstein military base, Washington will announce the new weapons package for Ukraine. It would be one of the largest sent so far even if, however, it would not contain the tanks requested by Kiev.
London has instead announced in recent days that it is ready to move its Challenger 2s, while Warsaw needs the go-ahead from Germany to mobilize the German Leopards. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Germany would be able to deliver ten or fifteen tanks to Ukraine next autumn . But the pressure on Berlin to speed things up is increasing, with the European Parliament explicitly asking the EU to push for the delivery of the Leopards to Kiev and NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg assuring that the allies will soon supply Kiev « heavier weapons".
(Unioneonline/D)
