Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the U.K. would be sending 15 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine—enough to form a company of the formidable vehicles and an end to all the semantic wrangling required to maintain the idea that the West would not send Ukraine a “tank.” In fact, the announcement from Downing Street makes it clear that the U.K. isn’t just sending its tanks, it’s sending along a whole tank unit, including the armored vehicles needed to recover and repair the tanks in the field. It appears they’re going to pick up a company and shift it to Ukraine, complete with everything but the drivers and support staff.
In addition, the U.K. package includes more AS-90 self-propelled artillery systems, ”hundreds” of the precision guided GLMRS missiles (the family of M30 / M30A1 used with the M270), Starstreak air defense systems, “dozens” of unspecified UAVs, and as many as 200 additional armored transports.
As of Thursday morning, the U.K. is still adding on to its latest promises to Ukraine. The latest announcement includes 600 of the new “Brimstone 2” anti-tank missiles. This is the latest generation of such weapons carrying a tandem-shaped charge warhead designed to defeat spaced armor and even advanced reactive armors. The U.K. earlier supplied a limited number of the original Brimstone missiles to Ukraine (something that didn’t become known until about six months after it actually happened), but this is a big shipment of the latest tool for infantry attempting to take out armored vehicles.
When it comes to this round of assistance packages to Ukraine, Britannia rules.
However, Biden is still getting his bid in. U.S. assistance packages have come back to back over the last week, and it now looks like Ukraine is likely to receive, not 50, but 100 Bradley fighting vehicles. On top of that, the U.S. is sending another 100 Stryker vehicles to Ukraine. Considering just how many variants there are of this system, it’s worth asking which Stryker Ukraine will be getting. We don’t know yet, but we may learn that today.
Right now, no one is sending a signal that Biden is likely to send the M1A2 to Ukraine. But sticking one on a transport plane, flying it to Rzeszów in Poland, handing off the keys to a Ukrainian soldier, and letting him drive it across the border has to be tempting, if only so Biden could say, “There, asshat. Are you happy now?”
What was I saying again? Oh yeah, aaugh. But stay tuned today and tomorrow as these packages of assistance get finalized and announced. There are already signals that Ukraine will be receiving Swedish Archer and French CAESAR self-propelled guns in addition to those already announced AMX-10 yes-I-know-we’re-not-supposed-to-call-them-tanks.
There are still some big announcements to come and things could still change radically. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, The Telegraph is reporting that Poland may just decide to tell Scholz where he can put his permission slips.
Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has suggested he could go at it alone as Warsaw grows tiresome of Germany’s refusals to sanction the delivery of Leopard II tanks to Ukraine.
“Permission is a secondary matter. We will either get it quickly or do what we see fit,” Mr Morawiecki said.
Is this just Morawiecki trying to place more pressure on Scholz, or is Poland serious about ignoring transfer agreements just because there happens to be an invading Russian army in a neighboring country? Probably.
But here’s one thing for sure: In 2022, the German defense industry set a record with nearly $10 billion in exports. That record is going to stand for a long, long time.
Though movements along the line have been very small in both directions, there has been some action up near Svatove, though you might not know it from looking at this map.
Svatove area. Open image in another tab for a larger view.
Back before Christmas, Ukraine moved against the line of villages west of the highway and appeared to have liberated them all in a series of fast strikes. However, Russia pushed back into the area principally along a kind of cross-country miniature salient that stretched out to the small village of Dzherelne. From there they began sending forces against Kolomyichykha and Stelmakhivka to the northwest. As best as I can determine at this point, all of this area is genuinely in dispute. Locations like Kolomyichykha appear to be unoccupied by Russia, Ukraine, or any civilians. They’ve ceased to be more than a georeference for forces that are skirmishing back and forth through muddy fields.
Russia also appears to have pushed back in the Nezhuryne area at the southern end of this map. I’ve marked the whole area in the middle as disputed, but the truth is that I have absolutely no news on it since the first couple of days of the new year.
At the north end of the map is where the most significant action took place. For weeks, Ukraine and Russia sparred across the highway between Novoselivske and Kuzemivka. Each side at times took portions of the town on the other side of the highway only to lose their grip in the next counterattack. However, shortly after the start of the year, Russia moved against Novoselivske and appeared to push Ukraine entirely out of the area, which would have been a significant setback to efforts in liberating Svatove. It would have been, except that earlier this week Ukraine surged back into Novoselivske in force, apparently delivering a decisive defeat to Russian forces in the area and leaving them well positioned to dominate this position. In theory, Russia still has Kuzemivka, but that may be more a matter of Ukraine hasn’t moved there yet than Russian forces still in occupation.
Everything along this front has been frustrating, and the casualties to both sides continue to be hideous. But things in this area may still move well before any new gear arrives on the scene.
Russia has become obsessed with adding more air defense systems in Moscow, and it’s going to great lengths to make it happen.
Be warned: If you go looking for pictures of Ukrainians celebrating Epiphany Day, not all the images are going to be as ethereal as the one below today’s title. Most of them will look like your local bowling league celebrating a Polar Bear Challenge.
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