UPDATE: An air raid alert issued over Ukraine as defence units shoot down incoming missiles, How close are we now to nuclear war. What do you think?
Since Vladimir Putin crossed the Russian Rubicon by ordering tanks to rumble over the Ukrainian frontier last February, almost everything has gone wrong.
Little has gone to plan.
His madness didn’t work and the war – for that’s what it is – became a bloody ruinous and terrifying stalemate of counter attacks and dismemberment of life.
The one thing Putin has managed to do is reveal just how the Western world became like bleating rabbits caught in the headlights of horror. Frozen and about to get their heads knocked off.
Then Boris turned up in the Ukraine and signed a bomb to be sent to Russia, Switzerland, a long-held tradition of neutrality, moved towards allowing other countries to re-export Swiss-made weapons and Germany finally revealed their bollocks and agreed to allow their tanks to go to war.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, had been asking for tanks, which are the key to smashing Russian defences to regain its territory.
Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, said: “This is going to become a real punching fist of democracy against the autocracy from the bog.”
Kirill Mikhailov, a Kyiv-based military researcher, told The Telegraph that deliveries of tanks on that scale could “change the course of the war”.
He said: “We’ve already passed the end of the beginning. What you need now is to be able to replenish the Ukrainians to the point where the Russians will constantly be on the retreat.”
The tanks pledge has resolved major rifts in the Western alliance over sending tanks .
US officials had maintained that Abrams tanks were unsuitable for use in Ukraine because they are difficult to operate and maintain, require extensive training and need frequent refuelling.
The White House and Pentagon were caught off guard by the strength of the German reluctance.
But following intense behind-the-scenes negotiations a transatlantic tank deal was made.
The Kremlin of course has downplayed the impact that western tanks will have, saying that the military aid to Ukraine would “burn like all the rest”.
However, his display of solidarity by Western nations sends a powerful message to Putin that they remain steadfast in their support for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people.
This is not an act of provocation, as Putin would like to claim, but a reaffirmation that Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion must fail.
They already had the courage to prevail. Now they have the tanks too.
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