More than ten months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the West is finally giving in to the Ukrainian requests for armoured combat vehicles that should make soldiers on the battlefield better able to deal with Russian tanks.
Following a telephone conversation, United States President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Thursday that they plan to send armoured combat vehicles to Ukraine.
"The Russian invasion of Ukraine is at a critical point. We will therefore further strengthen support for Ukraine," they said in a joint announcement. The US is expected to send some 50 so-called Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, while Germany will send 40 Marders.
The US-German pledge comes after French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday that France would deliver an undisclosed number of AMX-10 RC vehicles to Ukraine.
Possible game-changer
These pledges by France, Germany and the US – which are expected to quickly be followed by the British – mark an important new phase in Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, military analysts say.
It is the first time NATO-standardised infantry fighting vehicles have been shipped. For Scholz in particular, this was completely unthinkable until recently, as he had been showing special caution for months not to "provoke" Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But in Washington, Paris, Berlin and London, it seems that the realisation is dawning more and more that Putin does not need a reason to escalate the war further, especially now that Russia has been attacking Ukraine's energy network with weekly drone attacks for over three months.
For Lieutenant Colonel Tom Simoens (Royal Military School Brussels), the delivery of the combat vehicles is a particularly important step, and could prove to become a possible game-changer in war.
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"With its speed, agility and deployability, the Bradley is the flagship among US infantry fighting vehicles, and is counted among the 'Big Five' in the US, alongside the Abrams tank, the Patriot air defence system and the Black Hawk and Apache helicopter," he told De Morgen.
In late December, the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi already stated that the country needs at least 300 tanks, 600 to 700 infantry vehicles and 300 howitzers to launch a counter-offensive.
For now, however, the West still refuses to supply tanks, fearing a Russian escalation.
