UK supplying tanks? Wasn’t that one of Vlad’s red lines - he’d consider it active NATO intervention/involvement and retaliate? Not sure how he’s going to break that to the Russian public seeing as he has been saying Russia is fighting NATO, all along. (Another of his public ‘delusions’ which he demands his population also indulge in - just like those maps being extremist lies.)
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Is there anything that advanced in the Ukrainian inventory? The Challenger 2 has a fully integrated battlefield management system. It’s main gun also has a very long range.
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Russia does have the sister ship, but due to lack of infrastructure, the boilers need replacing because they had to run them continuously for power in port rather than using shore hookups.
Then when they were refitting it, the floating drydock lost power, had (mysteriously!) no fuel for the aux generator, and as it swamped, the crane fell on the deck of the carrier and damaged it.
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That sounds like a bad movie.
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Russia will react the same way it has for every “red line” so far. In the lead-up to any decision by the West that Russia doesn’t like, Russian propagandists work up a frenzy: it is unacceptable, we will retaliate, did you know we have nukes?! Then the decision is made and Russia suddenly loses all interest and downplays everything: it doesn’t make a difference, the plans haven’t changed, our tanks are better than your tanks anyway.
This has happened again and again: when talking about Javelins and Stingers, about battlefield intelligence, about field artillery, about HIMARS, also about Ukraine being given EU candidate status, or Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
It all has to do with the fact that the Kremlin no longer has any new cards in hand it is willing to play, and the fact that the current stakes (for Russia) aren’t as high as they’re claimed to be. If Russian invaders were to be pushed out of Ukraine entirely, Putin would still have a hope of managing the domestic backlash and staying in power. But an open war against NATO or a nuclear first strike could only end badly for Russia.
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I mean, obviously it would, as you say, end badly for Russia (as well as the rest of the world) but I suspect the salient point that makes it less likely is that it would end badly for Putin. Most of this war is about him, not Russia. Although, at this point it is hard to see many outcomes that are not bad for Putin.
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For Putin, a gradual loss of the war in Ukraine would be a bad thing that could still be managed, planned and mitigated. In contrast, a global and/or nuclear war would be something that makes all plans obsolete very quickly. And the track record would suggest that Putin is someone who likes plans doesn’t know how to deal with emergencies outside his control (the present mess in Ukraine being a result of a plan that was based on bad intelligence and wishful thinking, rather than some uncalculated risk). So I think Putin will prefer to lose the invasion instead of risking everything in some big escalation.
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India could sell them back the INS Vikramaditya.
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Then the US would slap trade sanctions on India for arming Russia.
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With that carrier? That would be a wholesale undermining of their war effort.
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A current affairs programme I was just listening to, proposed that authorising supply of Challengers would make it easier for Germany to permit the supply of Leopards (Poland is lobbying Germany to allow this).
There was also mention of Jordanian Challenger Is.
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Wow. If it’s one of the new Leopard II variants, that’s a significant escalation in aid.
ETA: It looks like Poland has the 2A4 and the 2PL. “The Leopard 2PL MBT is primarily tasked with assault, maintaining territory, and supporting mechanized and motorized subdivisions with its on-board weapon systems in all weather conditions during the day and night.”
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Short thread:
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