US arms could arrive too late
The Biden Administration has piled sweeping new sanctions on Moscow and approved a new US$2 billion (NZ$3.25b) weapons package to rearm Kyiv a year after Russia’s invasion.
The package includes more ammunition, electronic warfare detection equipment and other weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems, and several types of drones.
However, the equipment could take a year or two to get to the battlefront. As a result, it will do little to help Ukraine prepare for an expected new offensive in the northern spring.
More than 30 countries, representing more than half the world’s economy, have already imposed sanctions on Russia, making it the most sanctioned nation in the world. Still, as the conflict enters a second year, there are no indications that Russian President Vladimir Putin will retreat from the conflict.
And the sanctions have yet to deliver the sort of knockout blow to the Russian economy that the White House and independent economists predicted at the start of the war. Export controls and financial sanctions are gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, but oil and other energy exports last year enabled Putin to keep funding the fight.
Russia and Ukraine faced off at the United Nations Security Council yesterday on the first anniversary of their war, with their confrontation even extending to duelling moments of silence for the dead.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba asked the
meeting to observe a minute of silence ‘‘in memory of the victims of the aggression’’.
As Kuleba sat down, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia asked for the floor, saying, ‘‘We are getting to our feet to honour the memory of all victims of what has happened in Ukraine starting in 2014 – all of those who perished’’ – references to Russia’s claims that the conflict with Ukraine began that year, after Ukraine’s Moscowfriendly president was driven from office by mass protests. Russia responded by annexing
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, then threw its weight behind an insurgency in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine region known as Donbas, which Putin has illegally annexed.
Meanwhile, a contentious Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe parliamentary meeting ended yesterday with condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Russian delegates accused the West of preventing dialogue by arming Kyiv.
Ukraine and Lithuania
boycotted the meeting in Vienna due to the presence of six Russian delegates, who were given visas by Austria despite being under European Union and US sanctions. Yevheniia Kravchuk, a Ukrainian lawmaker, said Russia had ‘‘violated every single letter’’ of the OSCE’s founding document and should be suspended from the organisation.
The OSCE’s work has ground to a halt in the past year, with Russia using its veto to block all major decisions.
■ Ukraine may have to wait until next year or even later to receive the first batch of American Abrams battle tanks, a senior Pentagon official says.
Whereas Germany is pushing ahead with delivering 14
Leopard 2A6s, a long delay in the Abrams’ arrival will be a blow to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is planning a counteroffensive this year.
‘‘We’re looking at what’s the fastest way we can get the tanks to the Ukrainians,’’ said Christine Wormuth, the US army secretary. ‘‘None of the options are weeks or two months.’’
However, there was good news for Kyiv yesterday with the arrival of four German-made Leopard 2 tanks from Poland. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Berlin would add a further four Leopard 2s to the 14 it was already planning to send.
The Pentagon claims to have no excess Abrams tanks available from storage sites. Those in storage also tend to be refurbished older versions of the tank, the M1A1.
Under existing plans, the tanks to be sent to Ukraine will be new Abrams M1A2s.
However, they will not be fitted with classified depleted uranium armour plating, which is solely for US use.
Wormuth hinted for the first time that it was possible that the 31 Abrams offered to Kyiv might not be new ones.
There was a variety of ways to produce the tanks, she said, from building them from scratch to drawing them from the US inventory.
Poland’s purchase of 250
M1A2 Abrams is going to take until 2025 or 2026 for delivery.