Poland Seeks Coalition to Send Leopard Tanks to Ukraine

07 February 2022, Lower Saxony, Munster: Leopard 2 A7V main battle tanks of the Bundeswehr drive over the training area. (dpa)
07 February 2022, Lower Saxony, Munster: Leopard 2 A7V main battle tanks of the Bundeswehr drive over the training area. (dpa)
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Poland Seeks Coalition to Send Leopard Tanks to Ukraine

07 February 2022, Lower Saxony, Munster: Leopard 2 A7V main battle tanks of the Bundeswehr drive over the training area. (dpa)
07 February 2022, Lower Saxony, Munster: Leopard 2 A7V main battle tanks of the Bundeswehr drive over the training area. (dpa)

Poland said on Monday it would ask Germany for permission to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine - and would send them whether or not Berlin agreed as long as other countries did too.

The Kyiv government wants the German-made Leopard 2, one of the most widely used Western tanks, to help it break through Russian lines and recapture territory this year.

Germany, which must approve re-exports of the Leopard, has held back, wary of moves that could cause Moscow to escalate, and says other NATO countries have yet to formally ask to re-export them.

On Sunday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin would not stand in Poland's way, but Warsaw's call for a coalition signaled any transfer was still some way off.

Western countries have committed billions of dollars in new military aid to Ukraine in recent days: on Monday, European Union foreign ministers agreed to release their latest tranche, worth 500 million euros ($545 million), three sources said.

But at both Monday's EU talks in Brussels and last week's meeting of Western defense ministers in Germany, the issue of battle tanks dominated discussions.

"At this point there are no good arguments why battle tanks cannot be provided," Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said. "The argument of escalation does not work, because Russia continues escalating."

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, whose country, like Latvia, neighbors Ukraine, said Warsaw would ask Germany for permission to re-export the tanks to Kyiv.

"Even if we did not get this approval... we would still transfer our tanks together with others to Ukraine. The condition for us at the moment is to build at least a small coalition of countries," he said.

Poland has said it would provide a company of Leopards - around 14 - but Morawiecki said a transfer only made sense as part of a brigade - a variable but much larger number. Some 20 countries operate the tank, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Türkiye.

Ukraine and Russia are both believed to be planning spring offensives to break the deadlock in what has become a war of attrition in eastern and southern Ukraine as the first anniversary of the Russian invasion nears.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, was grappling with a corruption scandal that could dampen Western enthusiasm for his government.

A newspaper reported that the Ukrainian military had allegedly secured food at highly inflated prices, and a deputy minister resigned after an investigation into allegations he accepted a bribe.

Leopards on the move?

Ukrainian officials have been pleading with Western allies to supply them with tanks for months.

After Ukrainian advances in the second half of 2022, front lines have been largely frozen in place for two months, despite heavy losses on both sides. Ukraine says Western tanks would give its ground troops the mobility, protection and firepower to break through Russian defensive lines and resume their advance.

"We need tanks - not 10-20, but several hundred," Zelenskiy's chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram. "Our goal is (restoring) the borders of 1991 and punishing the enemy, who will pay for their crimes."

Arriving in Brussels on Monday, Germany's Baerbock declined to say if she had been speaking for the whole ruling coalition when she said Berlin would not prevent Poland re-exporting the tanks. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrat party has expressed concern Russia might escalate or even retaliate.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the tanks should not be held up one more day, while Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Russia could win the war if Europeans "don't help Ukraine with what they need now".

Defense analyst Konrad Muzyka said that if tanks were sent without Berlin's consent, Germany could at some point refuse to supply spare parts for them, which was why Poland was hoping other countries would also send Leopards.

"The political problem for Germany if they wanted to cut off the supply of spare parts would be much bigger if there was a coalition," he said.

‘Terrible war’

The Polish prime minister said Warsaw would also talk to countries with other modern battle tanks, without naming them.

American lawmakers pushed their government on Sunday to export M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, saying even a symbolic number would help push European allies to do the same.

Britain has said it will supply 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not rule out the possibility of sending Ukraine Leclerc tanks.

Leopards are more widely available than the British and French tanks, and use less fuel than the turbine-powered US Abrams.

The Kremlin said the splits in Europe over whether to provide tanks to Kyiv showed there was increasing "nervousness" within the NATO military alliance.

"But of course, all countries which take part, directly or indirectly, in pumping weapons into Ukraine and in raising its technological level bear responsibility" for continuing the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Since its invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, which it has cast as defending itself from an aggressive West, Russia has taken control of parts of Ukraine it says it will never return. Ukraine has said that restoring its territorial integrity is not open for negotiation.



Harris, Trump Offer Starkly Different Visions on Climate Change and Energy

Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
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Harris, Trump Offer Starkly Different Visions on Climate Change and Energy

Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)

As the Earth sizzled through a summer with four of the hottest days ever measured, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have starkly different visions on how to address a changing climate while ensuring a reliable energy supply. But neither has provided many details on how they would get there.

During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris briefly mentioned climate change as she outlined “fundamental freedoms” at stake in the election, including “the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law that was approved with only Democratic support. As a senator from California, she was an early sponsor of the Green New Deal, a sweeping series of proposals meant to swiftly move the US to fully green energy that is championed by the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing.

Trump, meanwhile, led chants of “drill, baby, drill” and pledged to dismantle the Biden administration’s “green new scam” in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. He has vowed to boost production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal and repeal key parts of the 2022 climate law.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far,” Trump said at the RNC, The AP reported. “We are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy.”

‘Climate champion’ or unfair regulations? Environmental groups, who largely back Harris, call her a “proven climate champion” who will take on Big Oil and build on Biden's climate legacy, including policies that boost electric vehicles and limit planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.

"We won’t go back to a climate denier in the Oval Office,'' said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action.

Republicans counter that Biden and Harris have spent four years adopting “punishing regulations” that target American energy while lavishing generous tax credits for electric vehicles and other green priorities that cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

“This onslaught of overreaching and outrageous climate rules will shut down power plants and increase energy costs for families across the country,'' said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. "Republicans will work to stop them and fight for solutions that protect our air and water and allow our economy to grow.”

Democrats have a clear edge on the issue. More than half of US adults say they trust Harris “a lot” or “some” when it comes to addressing climate change, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in July. About 7 in 10 say they have “not much” trust in Trump or “none at all” when it comes to climate. Fewer than half say they lack trust in Harris.

A look at where the two candidates stand on key climate and energy issues:

Fracking and offshore drilling Harris said during her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign that she opposed offshore drilling for oil and hydraulic fracturing, an oil and gas extraction process better known as fracking.

But her campaign has clarified that she no longer supports a ban on fracking, a common drilling practice that is crucial to the economy in Pennsylvania, a key swing state and the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas.

“As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,'' Harris told CNN Thursday in her first major television interview as the Democratic nominee. "We can grow ... a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.''

Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington research firm, said Harris’ evolving views show she is “trying to balance climate voters and industry supporters,″ even as her campaign takes ”an adversarial stance″ with the oil and gas industry overall.

Harris and Democrats have cited new rules — authorized by the climate law — to increase royalties that oil and gas companies pay to drill or mine on public lands. She also has supported efforts to clean up old drilling sites and cap abandoned wells that often spew methane and other pollutants.

Trump, who pushed to roll back scores of environmental laws as president, says his goal is for the US to have the cheapest energy and electricity in the world. He’d increase oil drilling on public lands, offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers and speed the approval of natural gas pipelines.

Electric vehicles Trump has frequently criticized tough new vehicle emissions rules imposed by Biden, incorrectly calling them an electric vehicle “mandate.″ Environmental Protection Agency rules issued this spring target tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks and encourage — but do not require — sales of new EVs to meet the new standards.

Trump has said EV manufacturing will destroy jobs in the auto industry. In recent months, however, he has softened his rhetoric, saying he’s for “a very small slice” of cars being electric.

The change comes after Tesla CEO Elon Musk “endorsed me very strongly,” Trump said at an August rally in Atlanta. Even so, industry officials expect Trump to roll back Biden’s EV push and attempt to repeal tax incentives that Trump claims benefit China.

Harris has not announced an EV plan but has strongly supported EVs as vice president. At a 2022 event in Seattle, she celebrated roughly $1 billion in federal grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses. As many as 25 million children ride the familiar yellow buses each school day, and they will have a healthier future with a cleaner fleet, Harris said.

The grants and other federal climate programs not only are aimed at “saving our children, but for them, saving our planet,″ she said.

Climate law, jobs Harris has focused on implementing the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021, as well as climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided nearly $375 billion in financial incentives for electric cars, clean energy projects and manufacturing.

Under Biden and Harris, American manufacturers created more than 250,000 energy jobs last year, the Energy Department said, with clean energy accounting for more than half of those jobs.

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, deride climate spending as a "money grab'' for environmental groups and say it will ship Americans' jobs to China and other countries while increasing energy prices at home.

“Kamala Harris cares more about climate change than about inflation,” Vance wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Goodbye Paris? Trump, who has cast climate change as a “hoax," withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. He has vowed to do so again, calling the global plan to reduce carbon emissions unenforceable and a gift to China and other big polluters. Trump vows to end wind subsidies included in the climate law and eliminate regulations imposed and proposed by the Biden administration to increase the energy efficiency of lightbulbs, stoves, dishwashers and shower heads.

Harris has called the Paris Agreement crucial to address climate change and protect “our children’s future.″

The US returned to the Paris Agreement soon after Biden took office in 2021.

LNG pause After approving numerous projects to export liquefied natural gas, or LNG, the Biden administration in January paused consideration of new natural gas export terminals. The delay allows officials to review the economic and climate impacts of natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The decision aligned the Democratic president with environmentalists who fear the recent increase in LNG exports is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions even as Biden has pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030.

Trump has said he would approve terminals “on my very first day back” in office.

Harris has not outlined plans for LNG exports, but analysts expect her to impose tough climate standards on export projects as part of her larger stance against large oil and gas companies.