The Kremlin has warned that British tanks due to be shipped to Ukraine “will burn” on the battlefield, and alleged the West is using Kyiv as its “tool” in an anti-Russian agenda.
The United Kingdom last week became the first country to pledge a shipment of Western heavy armour to Ukraine — some formerly communist-controlled countries have already sent Soviet-type tanks — to help “push Russia further back and secure a lasting peace” in the Eastern European country.
Russia, however, has warned that these Challenger 2 tanks are doomed, with The Telegraph reporting Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that “[t]hese tanks are burning and will burn,” and that the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine “will continue.”
Russian state-owned news agency TASS translated Peskov’s comments only slightly differently, having him say that “[t]hese tanks burn well and will burn just like all the others.”
TASS also reported Peskov as telling reporters that Western governments do not “care about the fate of the people who live in Ukraine or their future,” and that they “simply use that country as a tool to achieve their anti-Russian aims.”
Britain’s governing Conservative (Tory) Party have slashed defence budgets over the years — while spending on diversity and inclusion, green agenda policies, and foreign aid has remained largely untouched — and so only a small fleet of 227 of its Challenger 2 main battle tanks remain, with 148 due to be upgraded into Challenger 3s and the remainder mothballed and used for parts.
Reports indicate that Britain will only be able to send around 12 vehicles from this small force — dwarfed by the tank fleets of not only the likes of Russia, America, and China but also by those of second-rate powers like Spain and Japan — but it hopes that the gesture will encourage other European countries and perhaps the United States to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks and M1 Abrams tanks, which the Ukrainians have been lobbying for for a long time.
Analysts at the BBC and elsewhere believe the British tanks are “unlikely to make a big difference in the war” if they are not followed by other Western tanks, while the Russians claim further Western weapons transfers will make no difference regardless, and will only “add pain to the Ukrainian people and prolong its sufferings” without changing the eventual outcome of the war.