told<\/a> the press Wednesday it could take as much as a year for tanks to be purchased and packaged to be sent to the Ukrainian forces which require extensive training to both operate and maintain the battalion.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFurthermore, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh had thrown cold water on the initiative days ago, pointing out how \u201cit just doesn\u2019t make sense to provide [M1s] to the Ukrainians at this moment\u201d because they run on jet fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to the tanks, the commitment was reported to include eight M88 recovery vehicles designed to support them and around 500 other varied armored vehicles. Politically, the move from the United States also facilitated Germany taking similar actions and agreeing to send some of their Leopard 2 tanks to assist the Ukrainians, a model that is more in line with the capabilities of their forces, opening the door for other European nations to do the same as the German-made tank requires approval from their government to be deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what this is about: helping Ukraine defend and protect Ukrainian land,\u201d Biden added Wednesday. \u201cIt is not an offensive threat to Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, before the official announcement, Russians didn\u2019t see it that way as they were speaking out against the perceived escalation with Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Moscow Institute of the Middle East, going so far as to suggest a nuclear strike against the German parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGerman tanks with crosses on their armor will again march across Ukraine attacking Russian soldiers,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a natural reaction to this \u2014 the Soviet Union bombed Berlin in 1941.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And to me, this is a signal that the Reichstag, or Bundestag, which now replaces the Reichstag, simply should not remain standing any longer,\u201d Satanovsky said before detailing how a nuclear strike would leave the Germans with \u201cFlat, slightly radioactive, melted-down ground,\u201d in its place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had denied suggestions last week that the move was little more than a political ploy as he stated, \u201cWe don\u2019t do things or employ capabilities as a notion, you know, for anything other than providing credible combat capability. And that\u2019s where our focus will be in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That seemed to be negated by White House officials who touted the \u201ccontinued diplomatic conversations that we\u2019ve been having over the last few weeks\u201d that included Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and their European equivalents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House also made clear that Biden had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of his announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Original article: https:\/\/americanwirenews.com\/biden-announces-us-will-deliver-tanks-to-ukraine-days-after-pentagon-spox-said-it-doesnt-ma<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Already nearing the one-year mark, President Joe Biden signaled an even more protracted conflict between Russia and Ukraine Wednesday, reversing the Pentagon\u2019s position and moving forward with promising the Ukrainian military 31 tanks that could take until 2024 to arrive. Speaking briefly from the Roosevelt Room, Biden touted the continued support for the war-torn nation that comes at the cost of billions of dollars for the American taxpayer and strayed quite a ways from his \u201cdeterring sanctions\u201d imposed last year. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-biden"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}