Give these Leopards! – Polish as well as Baltic politicians are thundering – pushing Germany for delaying the decision to hand over to the Ukrainian side dense tanks, which are said to be essential for the triumph over Russia.
I omit here the purely military aspect, although it is besides important, due to the fact that any experts believe that these tanks will not fulfil their function on the roads of Ukraine. They're just besides heavy. Leopard 2 weighs at least 55 tons, in any versions even 62 tons. However, all bridges, roads and railway lines in the combat region have a burden capacity of more than 40 tonnes – only so that they can proceed to be utilized by Russian T-72 kind combat tanks with a weight of 44.5 tonnes or a T-90A weighing 46,5 tonnes. Leopard 2 would have had almost 17,500 kilograms besides many.
But this game about German tanks is not about that. The Leopard tank in Ukraine is simply a fresh step towards a much larger-scale war, a final break by the US and its most faithful servants (Poland and the Baltic countries) of German political autonomy. It's besides crossing an crucial intellectual boundary. Leopard 2 resembles the construction of the celebrated Tiger tank from planet War II.
As the conservative Austrian “Exxpress” writes: “For the first time since May 1945, along with the Leopard 2 mission in Ukraine, German tanks would start shooting Russian soldiers, after 77 years of peace, 77 years after the end of Hitler’s dictatorship—which cost the lives of a full of 27 million Russians.” For instigators, or for authorities in Kiev, it does not matter, but for Germans and Russians yes. It's like fulfilling the message of Karen Szachnazorov's movie "White Tiger". Let us remind the main character, the Russian tanker, erstwhile his “carer” of the NKVD convinces him in May 1945 that it is the end of the war, and he, or the ominous tank called the “White Tiger”, symbol of the war and the Western dream of crushing Russia – does not exist, says, “No, he is, and will come back here in 20, 50, possibly 100 years.” And possibly now it will actually return, in a fresh installment, not even request to erase the cross from its tower, due to the fact that Ukrainian tanks have been marked with a cross for any time.
Jan Engelgard
photo public domain
Think Poland, No. 5-6 (29.01-5.02.2023)
