Subscriber Questions on Ukraine, Answered

This week, Germany and the United States announced that they would be supplying Ukraine with dozens of Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams tanks to combat Russia’s invasion. Moscow said these tanks were more evidence of direct and growing involvement by the West in the conflict. How will the delivery of these tanks change, and potentially escalate, fighting in Ukraine? And is NATO as united as it was earlier in the war?

I put these and other FP subscriber questions to Foreign Policy’s team of reporters in an interview conducted on FP Live, the magazine’s forum for live journalism. What follows is an edited and condensed transcript. Subscribers can click on the video atop this page to watch the full discussion.

Germany’s role

Amelia Lester: Amy, explain German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s initial concern over sending tanks. Why was there all this back-and-forth within the German government?

Amy Mackinnon: This has been a continuing dynamic with Germany throughout the war. I see three main strands that help explain some of the German back-and-forth that we’ve seen in recent weeks over this question of the Leopard 2 tanks.

The first is history. After World War II, Germany was effectively neutered as a military state, and there was an effort by the Allied powers and then within Germany itself to make sure that Germany could never repeat what the world saw in World War II and, to a large extent, in World War I as well. Germany, in the latter half of the 20th century, rose to become the gentle giant of the European Union—an economic power, hugely influential politically within the bloc, but distinct in that it had a very pacifist policy and very limited defense spending and investment in its defense industry.

Since the [Russia-Ukraine] war began in February of last year, we’ve seen Germany going under this huge cultural shift with regards to its military and how it views itself as a military power in Europe. Olaf Scholz made that very famous speech days after the Russian invasion began, where he declared Zeitenwende, a turning point for Germany, saying they were going to start investing more in their military and playing a stronger role in both their own and European defense. But it’s a cultural shift, and that takes time. And so there’s been this ongoing, very interesting battle within Germany’s political circles as well on what role Germany should play in this conflict and what obligations they have. Some of that comes down to the politics within Scholz’s own party. There’s a very strong pacifist wing within the Social Democrats but also within the Greens, who are part of his coalition government.

The third component for Germany is its relationship with Russia. Going back to the Cold War, Germany had this pragmatic view toward Russia and the Eastern Bloc states, recognizing that they’re neighbors and that they have to be worked with in a constructive manner, and that has continued on through the post-Cold War period. To sum up what Germany’s been going through, it is this search for identity and what it means.

I would also add that Germany has been very supportive of Ukraine. They are, in absolute terms, the third-largest aid donor toward Ukraine. They’ve taken on a huge amount of refugees, which adds to the German annual budget.

Leopard tanks

AL: Jack, tell us about these German leopard tanks. Why are they a game-changer?

Jack Detsch: They’re faster and more accurate than the T-72, the Soviet-era tanks that the Ukrainians have in their arsenal, and they’re faster than the M1 Abrams tanks. These are lighter-weight, more accurate tanks that potentially could allow the Ukrainians to go on the offensive later in the spring.

But now they have to prepare separate new units running separate styles of equipment. You’re going to have M1 Abrams units, you’re going to have the British Challenger units, and you’re going to have Leopard 2 units, and they’re all going to try to figure out how to operate and maneuver, one of the toughest things for militaries to do.

The tank debate

AL: A subscriber asks whether you believe the heavy equipment currently being sent will make a difference to the outcome of this war, if the training and intelligence-sharing aspects of Western assistance remain largely unchanged?

JD: I think this will make a critical difference for the Ukrainians. The question that we have been asking our sources for the last several days is how are the Ukrainians going to organize this? The best sense that we have right now is that the Ukrainians are going to use those M1 Abrams tanks that are bigger—that have more firepower, that don’t move around as well as the Leopards—potentially for defensive maneuvers. That could stop another offensive coming out of Belarus if the Russians choose to do that, and that’s something that Ukrainians have been long worried about. [And then, in turn,] the Leopards could help extend the Ukrainian offensive. So this is very significant and perhaps even a turning point for the Ukrainians, but it all depends on how it’s implemented.

Robbie Gramer: One thing that we’re hearing from some Western European officials is the tank debate got blown out of proportion. Tanks might be an important political litmus test for support for Ukraine, they might be important in future offensives, but the real game-changer, at this point in the war, has been air defense and long-range artillery. While tanks are seen as the big sexy issue of the day in this debate, there’s an equally important debate going on within the defense world about getting artillery ammunition production ramped up so we can keep delivering it to Ukraine.

AL: A subscriber wrote in to say that the Department of Defense [DoD] and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised against providing the M1 tanks, but they do appear to have been rolled in the process. Any insights into the dynamics of the interagency process toward making that decision?

JD: This is a very complex system to operate, and you have to look also at the training pipeline. The Ukrainians have to get out of training and onto the battlefield in sometimes days or weeks. When you’re training American soldiers on these types of systems, they could be going for months. The United States isn’t just having these systems shipped overnight like the Leopards. The Abrams tanks will have to be built or found in U.S. stockpiles and then actually put into the field, so it’s a much longer lead time potentially. That was the hesitation among DoD brass, among DoD officials.

Although at a certain point during the war the Biden administration worried tanks could be escalatory, it certainly seems like this was something that came from the top. [President Joe] Biden really pushed for this after the German request for the Abrams tanks came in to give them political cover for the Leopard tanks being sent over, and that trickled down.

The Wagner Group

AL: A subscriber asks about the Wagner Group’s use of conscripts and convicts on the front lines in Ukraine and how effective that was.

AM: John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said that 90 percent of the casualties sustained in the fighting in the region had been former prisoners. That tells you that the vast majority of those casualties are Wagner recruits because Wagner has been on a recruitment drive in Russian prisons, offering men to have their sentences commuted if they promise to go to fight in Ukraine for a certain period.

It’s not a sophisticated military strategy. I would question whether it is a sustainable one, but it has allowed them to make that very slow incremental progress in Soledar [in eastern Ukraine]. The incentive for the Kremlin in allowing Wagner to take the lead in this is that’s going to give them time to build up their conventional military forces potentially for a spring offensive. Wagner has its own incentive. Soledar is a salt-mining town. We know from Africa, from Syria, and [from other places where] Wagner has operated that they seem highly motivated to go into areas where there may be natural resources that they can mine.

NATO tensions

AL: Robbie, tell us a bit about the upcoming NATO meetings and what you expect to come out of those.

RG: What we’ll expect to see is a lot more political and diplomatic signals saying, “We are committed to seeing Ukraine win this war against Russia,” as a signal to Moscow. You’re going to see a lot more talk on the supply chain difficulties, on ramping up defense, industrial production of ammunition that Ukraine will need.

For decades, NATO’s operational focus was on Afghanistan, on counterterrorism. No one or few could have predicted a few years ago that that there would be an open trench warfare-style conflict in Europe. The name of the game, again, would be mass-producing artillery as in World War I, and so there’s going to be a lot of discussion on how to do this massive sea change in defense posture.

You’re going to see a lot of hemming and hawing about Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Turkey is the final block on allowing [their accession], and it’s turned into this big diplomatic firefight between Turkey and the rest of the NATO allies.

Russia’s plans

AL: Amy, a question for you from a subscriber. He asks that if the Russians perceive NATO has joined the war by the time of the upcoming spring offensive, will they take the opportunity to cross Lithuania and/or Poland’s borders?

AM: Russia already perceives NATO as being embroiled in this conflict. Certainly that’s the message that we hear from Russian propaganda and statements from senior Russian officials—that this war is an effort for them to kneecap Ukraine’s ability to function as an independent state and also that they perceive it as this wider war with the West.

My sense from speaking to officials from the Baltic states [is that] they’re certainly not resting on their laurels. They are keeping up the defenses, asking for more reinforcements from NATO. But at the same time, my strong sense from speaking to Western officials is that unless Russian military planners have become completely suicidal, they do recognize that a conflict with NATO is not something that they would win, and they would like to avoid that. And you see that also in the conduct of the war so far. The Russians have been very careful to make sure that there is no overspill into Poland or neighboring countries of Ukraine.

View from the global south

AL: Robbie, a subscriber asks, what will it take for the global south to see this as a conflict worth taking sides on?

RG: This is the big question for Biden’s State Department right now. I think the best barometer for how the rest of the world sees this is the United Nations voted early on in the conflict condemning Russia’s invasion, and you saw a lot of countries that had worked with Russia in the past issuing their full-throated condemnation of the war.

But one example that underscores the complexity of this issue is South Africa—obviously, one of the most politically, economically important countries in Africa. It is continuing to tout its relationship with Russia. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, just visited, and South Africa is actually conducting joint military drills with the Russian and Chinese navies that happen to coincide with the first anniversary of the war.

There’s a lot of difficulty for the United States, Ukraine, and its allies to get African countries and other countries in the global south on board when some of these countries are saying, “We don’t have a dog in this fight.” A lot of African leaders also bristle at the thought of being viewed as pawns in this geopolitical chess game of influence between powers like Russia, China, and the United States. So, ironically, sometimes, the more the United States pushes, the more other countries might dig in their heels.