The US will begin training Ukrainian forces on how to operate Abrams tanks next month as it seeks to get them onto the battlefield against Russia before the end of the summer.
US M1A1 Abrams tanks will be sent by mid-May to Grafenwoehr, Germany, where roughly 250 Ukrainians will undergo a 10-week training course with US troops, a US official told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The tanks are a long-awaited capability for Ukraine, which has been battling Russia for more than a year. In total, the US is providing 31 tanks, the size of one Ukrainian tank battalion.
Though the US had originally said it would send the newer M1A2 versions of the tanks, officials said in March that the Ukrainians would instead get the M1A1, dramatically accelerating the timeline for delivering the tanks.
In addition to tanks being provided by the US, Ukraine will also be receiving German Leopard 2 tanks and British Challengers. The armored capability is likely to make a difference on the battlefield for embattled Ukrainian troops, but the impact won’t be immediate due to the timeline for training — not to mention the significant logistical demands to keep the tanks up and running.
“Those saying, ‘just give them the damned tanks!’ have likely never seen the choreography to making this work on the battlefield,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, former commander of US Army Europe, previously told CNN. “In combat, get just a few things wrong and it causes disaster and failure. Lethal tanks turn into pillboxes that don’t move or shoot,” he added.
Training status: Roughly 8,800 Ukrainian troops have already finished combined arms training in Germany and returned to Ukraine, Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for US Army Europe and Africa, said in a statement Friday. Currently, there are approximately 2,250 Ukrainian conducting combined arms training in Germany.
Austin met with allied officials again on Friday as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Ramstein, Germany. The group has provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, Austin said.
“Putin thought that he could easily topple Kyiv’s democratically elected government. He thought that the wider world would let him get away with it. He thought that our unity would splinter,” Austin said. “But he was wrong — on each and every count.”
Tanks repair hub: Germany, Poland and Ukraine also signed an agreement Friday to set up a hub in Poland to repair the Leopard 2 battle tanks, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters.
Pistorius said that all parties agreed on how to finance it and said that operating the hub could start at the end of May.
CNN’s Nadine Schmidt in Berlin contributed reporting to this post.
