Anita Anand says Canada will send tanks to Ukraine — and that the move is more than symbolic


OTTAWA— The Canadian government said it will send four heavy battle tanks to Ukrainian forces, a day after Germany gave the green-light to international allies for the use of German-designed tanks in an attempt to turn the tide against the Russian invasion.

Defence Minister Anita Anand told a news conference in Ottawa the move was more than symbolic, and is part of an international push to help Ukraine defeat Russia.

“We are part of a global allied collective to ensure that we are maximizing the amount of aid overall and the number of tanks that we can send,” she said.

Anand said the invasion was always “unacceptable” but that over the course of the past 11 months, the nature of the war “has changed.”

“What has changed is the need to continue to support Ukraine with the military equipment that it needs in the short and the long term, to secure victory and to reclaim territory,” she said.

Anand stressed that Canada has responded to specific requests from Ukraine, “and now Ukraine has asked for tanks and Canada not only is stepping up today with four tanks but is continuing to evaluate what more we can do in the area of tanks and military.”

She said an important part of Canada’s latest contribution is the supply of parts, support personnel and trainers. “Maintaining tanks is difficult, especially in light of the complexity of this vehicle. This is not just like changing oil in a car,” she said.

“This is a need to make sure that we have continued flow of spare parts that are able to be received to maintain the tanks and then to utilize them where necessary to deploy them.”

Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said the Canadian Armed Forces would begin to airlift the four operational tanks one-by-one on its C-17 cargo transport plane as soon as possible.

The Leopard 2 tanks are the main heavy tanks of Canada’s army, and are also in the arsenal of many NATO allies.

Eyre underlined that European allies have several thousand of the tanks in their inventories, whereas Canada’s fleet is relatively small. He suggested the combined aid flowing from the U.S., the U.K. and other European allies will make a mark, and dismissed Russian claims the increased firepower to Ukraine will escalate tensions with NATO.

“Russia will use any excuse to launch further attacks and they will grab on to any shred of credibility that they can find, but I don’t put much credence in that,” Eyre said.

“If they want to de-escalate, they can leave Ukraine.”

Canada has 82 Leopard 2 tanks in three different battle and training configurations, and another 30 designed for field support.

They are heavily armoured and highly protected vehicles, which the military says provide a tactical advantage in terms of mobility and firepower “survivability.” They are used to provide direct fire support on the battlefield.

Eyre said the four tanks being sent to Ukraine are older ones that have been used for training, but that many allies have also used them in operations. Anand said it would allow “interoperability” with Poland’s fleet as they sent the same tank.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has waged a weeks-long campaign to pressure allies to supply the tanks.

The U.S. and Germany announced Wednesday they were ramping up military aid to Ukraine, with the U.S. pledging M1 Abrams tanks, reversing months of persistent arguments by Washington that they were too difficult for Ukrainian troops to operate and maintain.

Germany had been under growing pressure to approve the dispatch of its technology, but insisted it would only do so if the U.S. also stepped up.

Poland, the Czech Republic and other NATO countries had already provided Ukraine with hundreds of smaller Soviet-made tanks from the Cold War era, when they were part of the Soviet bloc. Ukrainian armed forces have used similar aging weaponry, and needed no extra training to use them.

But Germany had held off allowing export of its technology and tanks it had sold abroad out of fears of escalating the conflict and drawing NATO forces into an all-out war against Russia.

Russia condemned the move as just that, and in the last 24 hours has ramped up its attacks.

In a written statement, the head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress welcomed the latest announcement by the Trudeau government. Alexandra Chyczij said the tanks supplied by Canada and its allies will be “a game-changer in the fight for the liberation of Ukrainian territories from brutal Russian occupation.”

“The sooner Ukrainian forces drive the Russian invaders from sovereign Ukrainian land, the sooner peace will return to Ukraine and to Europe,” she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not speak to reporters on his way into a caucus meeting Thursday, but had said a day earlier that Canada would continue to support Ukraine “in its defence of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the principles and values that underpin all of our democracies against Russia’s illegal and horrific invasion.”

Anand travelled in secret to Kyiv last week, where she announced Canada would purchase and send to Ukraine an additional 200 armoured personnel carriers made in Mississauga, on top of eight already provided, at a cost of $90 million.

Ottawa has also pledged $406 million to donate U.S.-made surface-to-air defence missile systems to Ukraine, as part of $500 million the Trudeau government pledged in November for military aid.

In total, Canada has contributed about $1 billion in military support — and about $5 billion overall, including financial and humanitarian aid — to support Ukraine since last February’s Russian invasion.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday in Hamilton portrayed the effort to defeat Russia as the “right thing to do” but also one that would aid the world in achieving economic stability.

“I really believe that a clear, strategically viable and stable Ukrainian victory this year would be a big boost for the global economy and a big boost for Canada,” she said.

“It is in our national interest to do so.”

Freeland also touted Canada’s financial aid, saying Canada is — on a per-capita basis— “one of the leading supporters of Ukraine, and that economic battlefield is a very important one, helping the Ukrainian government to be viable every day to pay pensions to Ukrainians. To literally keep the lights on is important.”

With files from the Associated Press

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