US to send about 100 Stryker armored vehicles to Ukraine

Bloomberg

The Biden administration is planning to send about 100 Stryker armored vehicles in its next package of military aid to Ukraine worth about $2.5 billion. The US is poised to unveil the package as part of a broader announcement by western allies of new hardware for Ukraine that’s set for Friday, when defense ministers meet at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The plan comes as Ukrainian officials urged allies to provide more battle tanks, artillery and longer-range missiles systems. The UK on Thursday it will send a further 600 Brimstone ground- or air-launched attack missiles to Ukraine.
Sweden will send as many as 50 armored combat vehicles, known as CV90s, and has initiated a process to transfer the Archer artillery system to the country, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.
The package, which also includes anti-tank weapons, comprises the heaviest arms yet to be sent from Sweden to Ukraine.
The Archer is a truck-mounted artillery system that Ukraine has repeatedly requested from Sweden. The CV90s could be on the battlefield “within a couple of months,” while the transfer of Archers will take longer, according to Defense Minister Pal Jonson.
Poland may send German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without gaining permission from the government in Berlin, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.
“Approval is a secondary issue,” he told Polsat News late Wednesday. “Either we get this approval soon or we will do ourselves what has to be done.”
Poland has earmarked 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine and is waiting for other EU nations, to also commit.
Without naming Germany directly, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it was wrong for countries to say they will only supply his government with battle tanks if an ally outside the European Union, such as the US, does the same. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has indicated the ruling coalition in Berlin won’t move unilaterally to supply Leopard 2 tanks.
Speaking via video link, Zelenskiy told a World Economic Forum event in Davos that additional artillery and missile systems won’t be used to strike inside Russia but to target occupied territories from where Russian forces are launching attacks. Asked whether Ukraine would target Russian-occupied Crimea, he said: “This is not our intention, it is our land. Give us your weapons and we’ll bring our land back.”

Johnson, Freeland urge
allies to send Ukraine
weapons it needs
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canada’s deputy leader Chrystia Freeland have called on allies to swiftly provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needs.
The former UK premier also insisted that backers of Ukraine should stop worrying about a nuclear escalation, insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not” use atomic weapons.
“This is the moment to double down. This is moment to get it done. Get them the tanks. Get Volodymyr Zelenskiy whatever he needs,” Johnson told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday morning.
Freeland, who is Canada’s finance minister as well as deputy prime minister, told the audience that the difference between Ukrainian and Russian troops is that Ukrainians know why they’re fighting — and that was why they will win.
Zelenskiy joined the panel, opening the discussion via video link, in a week when allies have been debating whether and how to send high-tech tanks and other military supplies to aid the Ukrainian war effort. The Ukrainian president told the packed audience that he didn’t think it was the right strategy for a European nation to say it would send tanks only if a country outside the European Union sends them too.