 Are we seeing a new stage in the Ukraine war? Just this week, the United States and Germany have announced that they will supply tanks to Ukraine. Germany has also announced that its tanks, which are held by other countries, can also be supplied to Ukraine. But will this actually make a difference on the ground? What are the other geopolitical implications of these decisions? We will be discussing all this in this episode of Mapping Fortlines. We joined by Prabir Pufaristan. Prabir, so, of course, the immediate question that has many people have had when they heard about this news was that is this going to make a difference? Of course, we don't predict military developments too much. But nonetheless, it's a substantial number of tanks when you put all of it together, the Abrams tanks, the Leopard tanks, etc. So, how do you see actually these being deployed? And how does it actually affect the battlefield? There are three elements to the question, which I would like to take separately. Let's take the narrowest one first. What is the effect immediately on the battlefield if such a large number of tanks are put on again? Ukraine had tanks earlier. It had its T-72 tanks, Soviet vintage, which Ukraine later on developed some more. That was one lot, which got destroyed in the first phase of the war itself. And the second set, which came in when all the ex-Soviet tanks, the Soviet tanks were held by the ex-Soviet allies, where donated to Ukraine again, came from Poland, it came from other countries, a lot of them. It was also held in stock by a number of other countries who were not a part of the Soviet bloc, but had bought some of the T-72 tanks. Those slot also went into war, and they did also get destroyed. So, largely Ukraine is now trying to build a third tank army. And in this, the number of tanks that have come in, they seem to be about 100 or, if not more, because 75 are coming from Poland alone. About 15, 20 could come from Germany, 14 have come from the UK, the challenge of tanks. Abrams, we don't know when they will come, but if they come, they also may be at least 20, 25. We don't know what the numbers are going to be. But all of this means they are going to be with all the other armored personal carriers, armored vehicles that are coming in. We are looking something like about 100 tanks at least, and about another 200 to 300 armored personal carriers and so on. So, this is a large formation. And if you look at the map, and you have this map here, you can see that this is the front line, which is taking place now, which is between Ukraine and Russia. And if you take Crimea as the most strategic part of it, is it possible for then Ukraine using arms to the tank armies supported by personal carriers to make a thrust and bisect in a way this region, which is the Kherson-Zaprazia, Donbas somewhere, so that the Crimean link, Crimea to Russia, the link is broken. And therefore, Crimea becomes a possibility of then quote-unquote liberation of Crimea, as the NATO would really like it to be, because Crimea, Sevastopol is a big base for the Russians, naval base. It's the only warm water port that they have, naval base that they have. Therefore, that huge blow to the Russians if that falls. So, would that put Crimea back into play? So, I think militarily that is one of the things Ukraine is banking upon. And part of this calculation is also NATO's calculation, the United States particularly, that this will give leverage to Ukraine to bargain with Russia if they pose such a threat. Therefore, the use of tanks, now armored brigades and so on might lead to a changing. And they calculate, their basic calculation is last time they gave high marks in other military weapons, Ukraine was able to do a limited breakthrough, as you can see in the Karkov area and also in the Kherson area. So, can that be further enlarged if new weapon systems are given and will that lead to a change, qualitative change in the world theater and therefore the role of Crimea in this, in this larger strategic consideration. That seems to be a possible calculation, because otherwise the war, if it continues, has two major threats. One is to the destruction of Ukraine itself, because if the infrastructure continues to degrade as it is doing right now, and this winter may be very hard on the Ukrainian people, then it is a possibility that Ukraine to recover from this war is not going to be easy. And the amount of financial and other support it will take, which already Ukraine has exhausted a large part of the financial goodwill of the people, because they have already funded a huge amount, 100 billion is the amount that is being talked about, which has already come in. And that is up to November. So, last three months again more money has come in. So, if you put all of it together, how much of the goodwill of the people will stay to support Ukraine continuously at this scale is an issue. So, Ukraine is in danger of disintegration in this war continues. And the second part of it is that of course, this is directly now a war between NATO and Russia. And therefore, when you have German tanks going up against Russia, the impact of this on Russia is tremendous, because there are pictures of the world war where the German tank armies came into Russia is still there in their minds. This is not a picture which Germany wanted. And it is not a picture which is in favour of the long term solution to the Ukrainian problem. And therefore, this route that they are taking has the danger of spiraling out of control. At any point, why you have NATO which is of course, the three countries in NATO, we have nuclear weapons. United States of course, being the primary one. And of course, Russia has nuclear weapons, they have the ability to destroy the whole world. So, this seems to be one-upmanship. I would call that this one-upmanship, but it is getting into very dangerous waters. And therefore, both the bulletin of atomic scientists, the clock now doomsday clock is now the shortest that you can talk about in terms of how far away we are from Armageddon. And also, as you can see that the space between two nuclear powers is not there. They're both fighting face to face. NATO Armory, NATO troops are not there. But for all practical purposes, this is NATO versus Russia direct physical confrontation. This does not seem to give us any path to retreat by either powers. It locks NATO and Russia into this military struggle. And unless it gets destroyed, NATO forces get again destroyed. Doesn't win any victories, even if it is sort of maintained the same borders that is now we see on the ground over here. And there is no major change in that. If that happens, then I think we are going to see some tough times for Ukraine, for the world. And I think that peace is going to become increasingly more difficult. Of course, you can say that if Ukraine and NATO decisively loses, then that is a possibility of peace. I'm not so sure about that. Absolutely. Probably in this context, the key question was Germany's decision, because I think ever since the war started, the position and the approach, the attitude of Germany has really been the central question. At times it has seemed that Germany has been more reluctant to sort of take a very confrontational stance. Or there have been, there seem to be divisions within Germany itself, the government itself. But with this move, does it mark a categorical statement, a position of no going back as far as Germany is concerned? In politics and war, there is no such position as no going back. So I would not say that this is a decisive shift which locks every country on to war. Temporarily, yes. It's also true that there have been sections in Germany, in France, who are more gung-ho about getting into the war and less gung-ho about getting into the war. They have been more cautious. And if we take Germany, then the Green Party has been somehow the most radical in terms of wanting a war. As you can see, the Foreign Minister of Germany says, we are at war with Russia. Now that is a statement which is extremely dangerous because it's not made by journalists, made by the Foreign Minister of Germany with a certain official, therefore, sanctity to the statement. Now Germany doesn't consider itself that it's a war with Russia. Neither does Russia consider Germany is at war with Russia. So given that, it's very clear that the Green Party of which the current Foreign Minister is representative, that they are much more gung-ho about a fight with Russia than others are. I don't know why it could be possible that getting out of the energy gas and energy, fossil energy, coal, which also comes from Russia, that this might be a good way to do a war. I don't know if that is the larger ideological shift, which is there not being directly much more aligned to the United States. But it is, there are forces in Germany, there are forces in France, and there is a large underlying reluctance in these countries to prolong the war forever. There is slowly what we seem to say a war wariness, which is setting in because the cost of the war is being borne by the West European Union. America has borne the cost of war in terms of getting a lot of arms and weapons. But nevertheless, it's also better killing out of selling oil at a high price to the European Union. So therefore, both sides are not even as far as the war goes in terms of the impact of the economies. Given that European Union is likely to tire earlier about the war, but they don't seem to have much leeway in decision making as it stands. And though they did say no tanks, till America gives its tanks. So effectively, in spite of all the things that are being said about Germany, Germany looking bad, shawls looking weak and so on, the reality is United States has also committed tax. Now, one could be of course, calculated question that Germany didn't want to lose this tank market. Nobody, it sells a lot of this leopold tags and leper tags. And if it shows up as not so good, and if Russia is able to take them out, then immediately drops in market value. And therefore, the Americans become the tank then for the other side. So all the NATO allies and other friends will start looking at that as a solution. So their argument could be, if I have to cut off my tail, so will you. So this is the argument that seems to have gone on. If I commit leper, you commit your Abraham. So if we are shown up that we cannot face the Russian tanks or we suffer losses against the Russian tanks, I suspect both sides will. In that case, Abrams also will suffer losses. Particularly Abrams has the other problem. It was made really for desert conditions, much more than the snowy winter conditions they are going to face in Ukraine. So it may not be the best tank as the Americans also have been saying. But one part of it is clear that either way, whatever the terrain, whatever the weather, tanks are not invincible today. We have seen for instance the Houthis take out Abraham tanks. We have seen the ISIS-aligned forces take out leper tanks which Turkey used in Syria. So these are not invincible and we have discussed this earlier. Asymmetric war beans, it is easier to take out large pieces of equipment, whether it be warships, whether it be tanks, that the balance seems to have shifted in favor of such offensive weapons and the defense against such weapons are actually weaker today. So given that I don't think that tanks are going to make much of a difference in the long term, in the short term, is it possible to break through the Russian lines and therefore create a crisis for Crimea, create a crisis for Zaprogera, create a crisis for Kherson. These are the questions which we have to see in the future. I don't think that the Bakhmut line, the Ukrainians are going to be able to retrieve over there. So that I think Donbas region I think is going to be in Russia's hands sooner rather than later. I don't think the tanks are going to make a difference but in these areas it could make a difference so that we'll have to see. But I do think that essentially that the tanks in the long run are not going to make a difference maybe in a short term say one, two months they may make Ukraine may make some gains but ultimately it's the people that is there and Ukraine is running short of essentially soldiers who can be trained in this period to handle complex war maneuvers which is what tank army is called for. They're not just tanks, parcel, personal carrier, tanks, integration with other forces, integration with how you see the whole war theater and how you are able to do combined operations. These are the key issues and two to three months, four months training is not going to be enough perhaps for that. Tanks require, if you want to be somebody who can use it effectively it requires some time and how many tank commanders who were there the T-72s are still surviving to be able to do this that's a key question unless you have NATO also coming in with soldiers. They're actually sending soldiers. Soldiers which could come in as officially mercenaries but actually NATO's a content personnel. Absolutely, thank you so much Praveer for talking to us. So there we have it yet another big episode unfortunately as the war might like Praveer said at least escalated the short term. We'll be covering some of these developments in future episodes of Mapping Fortlines. Until then keep watching NewsClick.