Britain to give battle tanks to Ukraine

Till now, similar moves have been resisted by West

KYIV — After years of resisting providing Ukraine with some of the West’s most highpowered weaponry, Britain indicated Saturday that it would give battle tanks to Ukrainian forces to help prepare them for anticipated Russian assaults this spring.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine about his “ambition” to provide British battle tanks and additional artillery systems, according to a statement from Downing Street. Before the British statement, Zelensky thanked Sunak for “the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners.”

The British Challenger 2s would be the first Western-made battle tanks to be sent to Ukraine since Russia invaded last February. Officials in the United States and Europe have long worried that sending tanks and other powerful weapons that would substantially increase Ukraine’s ability to hurt Russian forces could prompt President Vladimir Putin of Russia to escalate the conflict, even by potentially attacking Western targets or deploying small-scale nuclear weapons.

But that calculus has begun to change in recent weeks, as Western officials worry that time is tight to help Ukraine prepare for an anticipated Russian offensive this spring and, some say, a counteroffensive of its own. They have become more willing to take risks, in part because the Ukrainians have performed well in battle and used other sophisticated Western weapons capably and within limits set by their allies.

Ukraine has been pleading for Western tanks almost since the start of the war to supplement its Soviet-era and Russianmade tanks and those supplied by other countries in Eastern Europe. Those tanks are wearing out fast after months of battle, and are also running low on ammunition that is no longer in production.

The push to satisfy Ukraine’s pleas gained speed this past week as the British and Polish governments publicly urged a change in the Western alliance’s stance. The British announcement could increase pressure on Germany to send its coveted Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, or at least to allow other European countries that have those tanks to give them to Ukraine. Poland said last week that it would send some of its German-made tanks, although Berlin would need to allow it.

The British news media reported in recent days that only about a dozen tanks were being considered. And there are some weapons that Ukraine’s Western allies still refuse to send, including fighter jets and long-range missiles that could hit occupied Crimea and military targets inside Russia itself.

The Biden administration, while leading the coalition supplying Ukraine with weapons, is still holding back Americanmade M1 Abrams tanks, gas guzzlers that require constant upkeep and, in any event, are too scarce to spare, officials say.

Also on Saturday, Russia launched two waves of strikes far from Ukraine’s front lines, jolting residents out of two weeks of relative quiet during a festive holiday period.

One of the strikes tore into a nine-story apartment building in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine, local officials said, killing at least five people and injuring dozens. Photos from the scene showed a massive fire burning in the aftermath of the strike, with significant damage to the residential building.

In Kyiv, the explosions caused by Russian missiles were heard minutes before air raid sirens sounded in the capital city, a rare occurrence. Hours later, a countrywide air raid alert was put into place.

The morning attack on Kyiv most likely involved ballistic missiles fired from the north, which is why the air raid warnings came late, according to Colonel Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force.

The Ukrainian president’s office said the blasts were part of an “attack on critical infrastructure facilities” in the city. Sites across the capital were hit, but no casualties were immediately reported.

Russian forces have intermittently hit Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine far from the front lines since October with large-scale missile and drone attacks that have mostly targeted electricity infrastructure and other key services.

Saturday’s strikes shattered a relative calm as Ukrainians celebrated Orthodox New Year, or Malanka, a traditional holiday that is aligned with the older Julian calendar rather than the newer Gregorian one.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian authorities denied Russian claims that the town of Soledar was under Russian control.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of Ukraine’s military administration in the Donetsk region that includes Soledar, told the Ukrainian news media that there was still fierce fighting around the mostly deserted town.

Seizing Soledar would represent the biggest success for Moscow’s forces in months, and could give them new locations to place artillery for the battle for the larger nearby city of Bakhmut. It also could put pressure on Ukrainian supply lines that run toward Bakhmut.

But military analysts have cautioned that the town itself is of limited strategic value.