According to reports, US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will donate infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine. The announcement comes just one day after France announced that it would send ‘light tanks’ designed in the West to Kiev.
According to a joint statement issued on Thursday evening by the White House and the German Chancellery, “the United States intends to supply Ukraine with Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and Germany intends to supply Ukraine with Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles.”
“Both countries intend to train Ukrainian forces on their respective systems,” according to the statement.
It is unknown how many of each type of vehicle will be sent to Ukraine or when they will arrive.
Earlier on Thursday, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that such an announcement was imminent, and that Berlin’s decision to ship the Marders to Ukraine had been made in consultation with the United States and France.
On Wednesday, France announced that it would send an unspecified number of its own AMX-10 armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine, with a government spokesman claiming that “it is the first time that Western-designed tanks are supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Although the Bradley, Marder, and AMX-10 vehicles are sometimes referred to as “light tanks,” the former two are more commonly referred to as infantry fighting vehicles, while the latter are known as armored fighting vehicles. No NATO countries have indicated a desire to supply Ukraine with western-built main battle tanks, and an unnamed American official explicitly ruled out the transfer of US M1 Abrams tanks to Kiev on Wednesday, according to the Washington Post.
Nonetheless, since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine last February, the US, Germany, and France have all supplied Ukraine with increasingly heavy weapons. Moscow has warned the West against arming Ukraine, claiming that it views incoming arms shipments as targets and that such shipments will only prolong the conflict while making Western nations de facto participants.
