US finalizing plans to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, US officials say

The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send US-made Abrams tanks to Ukraine and could make an announcement as soon as this week, according to three US officials familiar with the deliberations.

The timing around the actual delivery of the tanks is still unclear and it normally takes several months to train troops to use the tanks effectively, officials said.

An announcement about the tanks could be part of an attempt to break a diplomatic logjam with Germany, which indicated to the US last week that it would not send its Leopard tanks to Ukraine unless the US also agreed to send its M1 Abrams tanks.

Top national security officials in the administration have been actively considering steps they could take to convince Germany to send the Leopards.

On Friday, at a meeting of western defense leaders in Germany, the US and its allies failed to convince German officials to send the Leopards as part of Berlin’s next round of military assistance to Ukraine. But on Tuesday, the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said “We are preparing our decision, which will come very soon” on the tanks.