As the winter thaw looms in Ukraine, NATO tanks will be critical

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings We are closing in on one year since Russia invaded Ukraine and the war is still raging. On one hand, that’s horrible. This is a tragedy. Born of a dictator’s aggression on the other hand, one year. Ukraine still being free and fighting. Willing to go on the offensive to humble. Its invaders is one of the most impressive military feats in recent memory. Soon though, worse is likely coming and as the end of winter nears and reports of new Russian attacks, loom. Ukraine once again asked NATO for help and it took a while, but that help is on its way. Canada will supply Ukraine with four leopard two main battle tanks in the coming weeks. Canada, of course, is not the only nation sending leopard to tanks to Ukraine. These tanks will be critically important to Ukraine’s ability to take the fight to the Russians, but the process of getting NATO members on the same page to send them was anything but. Why is that? Why are these tanks so critical? What comes next in this war? And what role will Canada play among NATO countries to keep the aid flowing and keep the alliance together? I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Matt Gurney is a columnist, a reporter, and a co-founder of the line where you can read his piece about these tanks at theline.ca. Hi Matt.

Matt Gurney Hi, how you doing?

Jordan I’m doing really well, and I’m not asking you to start this conversation by being, you know, a foreign correspondent. You’re not on the ground right there, but in the big picture, As we get close to one year of war, how fraught is the situation in Ukraine right now?

Matt Gurney You know what? Honestly, pretty fraught. I would say we’ve stabilized into sort of, uh, kind of a low sweat stage where the Russians are not backing off. They’re continuing to fight. I don’t think Vladimir Putin feels like politically he can back off, not while, uh, You know, alive and certainly not in power. I also think for very obvious reasons, the Ukrainians don’t feel like they can give up. They’ve already seen what happens to their civilians, uh, when the Russian forces sweep in. And NATO is gradually, I think, recognizing that, uh, our security rests in. Keeping this conflict, uh, stable, but in Ukraine, and that means giving the Ukrainians the firepower they need to stay in the fight. The situation we have militarily, which speaks to this, is that the Russians are going the low quality, but lots of quantity route. The Ukrainians can’t throw as many bodies at this as the Russians can. They’re just outnumbered. They need firepower to overcome Russian numerical superiority, all of this is, uh, to use that term again, fraught. This is dangerous. This is not safe for anybody here. There is real danger of escalation, uh, into a broader conflict, potentially a nuclear conflict. 


Jordan That sucks.

Matt Gurney I don’t like having to tell you that, but I’d be lying to you if I said otherwise. The good news is, I think the odds of that. Relatively speaking low, but no, they’re not zero. This is, this is the facts we’re living with here. There is the danger of escalation in this conflict.

Jordan We’ll talk about that firepower in a sec because we’re actually a part of this. US and Canada, which is, which is nice. We’re gonna pat ourselves on the back. But first, what is Russia’s recent strategy been? You mentioned kind of low quality, high quantity, and here’s the big question. What could come next?

Matt Gurney Not necessarily a nuclear conflict, but there is a lot of talk about a renewed push and more aggress. 
The thing that needs to be stressed here, and I, it’s gonna sound like a statement of the blindingly obvious, but it’s really important to remember, is that right now it is very cold. It is the winter, and Ukraine and Russia are both known to have nasty winters. Canadians can appreciate that. It is very hard to operate these kinds of military campaigns during winter. It’s not impossible, but it’s, and I think both the Russians and the Ukrainians have taken the opportunity of winter to largely pause what they’ve been doing. There has been, uh, fighting. I, I’m not trying to pretend otherwise. And we, we, God knows, the Russians have been going after, uh, Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, power, heating, water supplies, energy.

Jordan mm-hmm. 


Matt Gurney things like that.

Jordan Mm-hmm.

Matt Gurney But on the front lines, the fighting has largely died off in most sectors. The Russians have been pushing hard in the Donbas area, particularly against two settle. One of which the Ukrainians recently did retreat from and allow the Russians to take it, not that there was much left of it after weeks of fighting. These are, uh, private military contractors, mercenaries. These are convicts who’ve been paroled and told if they survive long enough, they’ll be granted, uh, full freedoms. These are the so-called Mobic, which is, uh, Russian civilians that have been conscripted into military service. These guys are not properly trained. They’re not properly equipped, and they’re not properly armed. They’re dying by the thousands, but they’re still killing some Ukrainians. They are still forcing the Ukrainians to use up precious reserves of.

Jordan Uh, in particular artillery, ammunition, and also just to wear out their weapons, right?

Matt Gurney Every time you fire a gun, whether it’s a pistol, a rifle, or an artillery tube, you’re putting wear and tear on that machine, and guns are nothing but mechanical objects. So the Russians are basically trading the lives of. People that they don’t value very much their own citizens, but that’s not a problem for the Putin regime, and they’re using it to grind down the Ukrainians. It hasn’t been that much fighting. It’s been brutal where it’s been happening, but most of the frontline has been relatively quiet. 


Jordan What is coming though when we all know this?

Matt Gurney Is that there will be renewed spring offensive. Uh, the Ukrainians are concerned. It could be a multi-front attack by the Russians using conscripts from the north, from the northeast and from the east, potentially even from the south that have occupied Crimea.

Jordan Uh, meanwhile, the Ukrainians, of course, are preparing a resumption of their own offensives, right?

Matt Gurney The Ukrainians did a great job in the fall of really rolling back the Russians in some area. The Ukrainians are more mobile, they’re better trained and they’re better led. That allowed them to kind of exploit some of the weaknesses in the Russian command and control and the Russian training deficiencies. 
 I’m sure the Ukrainians would love to start doing that again, but right now it’s just too darn cold. So what do the Ukrainians need in order to be able to, a, hold off this offensive that’s probably coming, uh, but B, continue the success that they had in the fall when I think everybody around the world was once again surprised at their resilience and at their efficiency. 
 I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but you’ve actually asked two separate questions here. So what do the Ukrainians need to withstand the coming offensive and what they need to go back on the offensive is probably different. Uh, what the Ukrainians need to withstand the offensives that are, uh, likely coming is ammunition. 
 They need an insane amount of ammunition because when you are outnumbered, you can only compensate for that with firepower. Mm-hmm. , this is something we’ve learned many times in our military history, going right back, uh, to, to the French in the First World War who said, uh, Le Fu too, uh, which is probably mangling the pronunciation of that, but fire kills. 
 If you’re outnumbered, you need. Who on firepower and compensate for that, the Ukrainians are gonna be outnumbered in almost every battle they face. The Russians outnumber them nationally speaking four to one. So you’re, you’re never gonna have Ukrainian numerical superiority, but you can have firepower, superiority, and they’re gonna need an insane amount of ammunition. 
 Everything from, again, rifle and, uh, pistol bullets, especially heavy artillery. That will allow them, and this is brutal, but it will allow them to cull the larger Russian formations so that by the time the Russian units actually make contact with the Ukrainian forces, most of them are already dead. If you’re outnumbered four to one, but you kill three quarters of the enemy before they ever get to you, it’s a one-on-one fight. 
 And that kind of fighting does favor the defense. Mm-hmm. . So that’s what they need to survive, uh, defensively. To get going again on the offense. They’re probably fairly well equipped to do that actually. Um, they are developing and NATO is helping them do this. Very mobile armored forces. These are, uh, troop carrying vehicles. 
 Canada has sent hundreds of those. These are armored personnel carriers, which are. Again, troop carrying vehicles, but now often also having some of their own munitions machine guns are a kind of a automatic cannon of some kind. And I think what we really need to talk about today, cuz it’s it’s the new news story, is tanks. 
 The Ukrainians have had a lot of tanks, but they’ve been using post-Soviet Cold War leftovers. Basically a lot of these tanks have been destroyed. The Russians have huge inventories, again of old stuff. Really old stuff in some cases. All kidding. A side man. Some of the tanks the Russians have been sending into battle are as old as my mother, and I’m no spring chicken anymore either. 
 So that gives you a sense of how old some of this stuff is. But if you’ve got old tanks versus no tanks, the old tanks are gonna. The R uh, the Ukrainians started the war with large inventories of old Soviet equipment. A lot of it’s been destroyed. A lot of it’s been worn out. They are going to be outnumbered in tanks too. 
 They need that qualitative advantage, and that’s why they’ve been begging for modern NATO tanks. Tell me about the modern NATO tanks and why they’re so important. Well, I mean, I, I don’t pretend to be a technical expert on them. I understand this stuff more at the strategic level than the technical level, but it kind of comes down to what I was just saying. 
 It’s the qualitative advantage. Um, they are hopefully better maintained. I don’t, I don’t know how well maintained these tanks have been. I think that’s gonna come down to which country, uh, was, was storing them. But hopefully we’re able to get them in better shape. They’re better armor. They’re faster and they’re smarter. 
 They have better optical targeting systems. They have better communication systems, and they’re also more survivable. They’re just better designed. So even if you lose a tank in battle, the crew has a chance to survive. Their weapons are much more powerful and they are better. Uh, they’re effective at longer ranges. 
 Again, quality matters a lot here. Three or four 60 year old or like 1960s vintage, uh, r Russian tanks that have been pulled out of mothballs. Going up against one properly maintained NATO tank is not a fair fight that NATO tank, assuming the crew is trained properly by the Ukrainians, will easily kill those Russian tanks. 
 It will also give the Ukrainians the ability, and again, this is all a race against time. I don’t know how quickly NATO’s gonna be able to get these tanks ready and then deliver them, but it would give the Ukrainians the ability to really go on the offensive here.

Matt Gurney Remember how I mentioned already that the Russians have huge reserves of manpower? They’ve got these hundreds of thousands of mobilized soldiers.

Jordan Mm-hmm.

Matt Gurney These guys are barely trained. And their training is basically to storm a village, to storm a fixed position, a regimen or a brigade of, uh, of NATO tanks operated by the Ukrainian army would rule right over these guys. And that’s terrible. I feel badly for some of these conscripted soldiers who’ve been forced into this war by their own government here.

Matt Gurney But for the Ukrainian’s purposes, look, if you’re gonna kill these guys, do you want to kill them hand to hand with infantry, or do you wanna just drive a fleet of tanks over them? I know which one I’d choose. 


Jordan And in a second I want to talk about Canada and our tanks, but first in your piece for the line, you made a point that the simple agreement by so many NATO countries to send these tanks was really important in the big picture of this war. Can you explain why?

Matt Gurney Well, yeah, I can. NATO has been reluctant at every phase of this conflict to kick it up another level. 
And I think the counter argument has been even inside nato, this has been controversial. We’re not the ones kicking this up a level. The Russians are the ones kicking it up levels and we’re responding in turn. Right. There has been reluctance to send heavier and heavier weapons to the Ukrainians eventually, in almost every case we have done so, but we’ve done so after a lot of delay and debate. When it comes to tanks, there’s a really interesting wrinkle here. The Germans are among the most reluctant of the NATO countries to be supporting the, the Ukrainians with expanded supplies of weapons. In, in their defense, the, the Germans have provided a lot of military assistance to Ukraine, but they’ve been reluctant, more reluctant than most allies to kind of expand the scope of it to another level. 


Jordan Hmm.

Matt Gurney That hasn’t mattered up until now. Other countries have had the ability to say, well, here’s air defense systems. Here’s longer range artillery. Here’s, uh, better small arms, better rifles, better machine guns. The Germans haven’t been necessary to that process, but because of a weird quirk, they are absolutely indispensable in the conversation about sending tanks. And the reason for that is because Germany, manufactured, really good tanks. Their leopard two tanks are wonderful fighting machines. They are just highly effective killing machines and a lot of NATO countries use them. Germany, as the original country of manufacturer has the right to legally limit re-export of their technology. 


Jordan Huh?

Matt Gurney So many NATO countries, including Canada. Operate the Leopard two tank. Like I said, they’re fantastic tanks. They’re very good at what they do, but we can’t export them to Ukraine without Germany saying so. So up until the tank debate, German reluctance or whatever you wanna call it, Didn’t really matter that much. 
It wasn’t great because Germany’s rich and powerful, and it could have been very helpful if it had been less reluctant, but they didn’t really have the ability to stop any other NATO country from doing what they were doing with tanks, though they absolutely do. The leopard tanks are for the Ukrainians, the best option. 
NATO countries have fairly large stockpiles of them. They’re way better than anything. The Russians have less like have left, not even close. And I think as well they are relatively similar in terms of their engineering to the kind of tanks Ukrainian crews are already used to. It won’t be that hard to convert Ukrainian crews from their old Soviet vintage tanks over to leopards. The leopards are much better. But they’re machines of a similar kind. The leopards are the right options for the Ukrainians, and the Germans said no. And they said no over and over and over again. This was really awkward within the Alliance for a lot of reasons. Eventually, the British said they were gonna send tanks. The Americans said they were gonna send tanks, and that gave the Germans, I think to be blunt about this, political cover to go, oh fine, we’ll send tanks too and we’ll allow other allies to do this.

Jordan Mm-hmm.

Matt Gurney But the contributions from the British and the Americans and potentially the French as well. I don’t wanna say that they’re token be-cause, they’re not like, these are real meaningful contributions. These are good tanks, they’ll be useful. But it was a political symbol. A political gesture that was required to really unlock the German tanks and that will be the difference maker.

Jordan Which brings us to Canada. One of our, uh, leopard tanks arrived in Poland today, Monday, February 6th, which means soon, hopefully, uh, it can be in the hands of the Ukrainians. I have to tell you, Matt, one of the things, and I, I, I cracked a joke a little bit earlier about patting ourselves on the back, but you and I have talked about the state of the Canadian military in general. I was impressed we had these tanks to send. I wouldn’t have expected it. Of us.

Matt Gurney Yeah. You know, we, we joked before we hit the record button today that, uh, the Canadian tank has arrived. 
The comeback begins now. Soooo, Canada in the Cold War operated tanks, uh, they were leopard one tanks, the first generation of the German leopards as part of our NATO. Distributions. We were worried about, uh, the Soviets invading Europe and we knew we’d need tanks to beat them after the Cold War. We didn’t really know what the hell to do with the leopards. 


Jordan Like did tanks still matter? Were they still relevant in military terms?

Matt Gurney This was something that we spent a big part of the two thousands, uh, well certainly the 1990s and the two thousands debating. Meanwhile, of course, uh, as you’ve pointed out, we’ve spoken often of the Canadian military, Canadian politicians of every partisan affiliation were just gutting the military. Here they were slashing the budgets and diverting that money. Cuts or other programs that were more politically attractive. And there really was this sense that maybe the Canadian army no longer needed tanks because the world was a safer place. We would no longer be fighting that kind of heavy war anymore. Um, and Afghanistan happened and it, we discovered very quickly that tanks still matter. They maybe weren’t as useful as they used to be in the older style of wars that we were thinking about, but they still had a really good. They’re very hard to kill. They’re resistant to, rocket propelled Grenade fire. They’re resistant to improvised explosive devices, and these were the weapons. Our enemies in Afghanistan were using. Tanks also bring just an enormous amount of fire power. If you are infantry and you’re moving into a Taliban controlled area, you wanna have a couple of tanks along for the ride. They’re tough and they can kill any obstacles that are in your way. So what Canada kind of had to. And this is back during the Afghan war, is we had to go to our NATO allies and go, who has spare tanks? Who, and a, a lot of our allies did have spare tanks because after the Cold War, they’d cut their inventories too. So can, I don’t remember the exact number, but Canada basically ended up buying from the Germans and I think the Netherlands, about a hundred modern tanks. 
That’s not a lot. That lets us feel basically one regimen worth of tanks. Because, you know, if you have a hundred tanks, a bunch of them are gonna be stripped for spare parts. A bunch of them are needed for training. A bunch of them are gonna be broken down at any given time. Hmm. But you can basically think of military technology in, in this way. However much equipment you have. About a third of it is useful at any given time. So of our hundred some odd tanks, Canada probably has somewhere around 30, maybe 40, at the outside that are actually usable. And again, that’s enough for one unit’s worth of tanks. All the others are needed for training. They’re down for maintenance or along the way, they just break down and we strip them for parts.

Jordan So Canada committing four tanks to Ukraine doesn’t sound like much, but that’s potentially 10 to 15% of our usual, of our actual useful inventory of tanks. What does this mean?

Matt Gurney Uh, first of all, Canada’s commitment, as well as, uh, Germany’s permission, I guess, to, to move these tanks over there. What does it mean for the general, uh, tone of the war? You know, you mentioned that Germany needed some political cover. Now they have that. Now that they’re on board with sending tanks, does. I don’t mean to ask it like it sounds like they were fractured, but does this like reunify NATO around Ukraine in preparation for whenever hostilities really pick up in the spring? 


Matt Gurney I think it removes an irritant. I don’t know if it actually takes us up to a new level. Well, I mean, hey look, the Russians would say, of course it takes us up to a new level cuz now we’re sending tanks and we were before. I view that more as an evolution than I do any sort of dramatic change. Uh, what this does is it gets the allies back on the same page because I think. I think the Germans really were uncomfortable not sending tanks and Germany obviously to, to state. The blindingly obvious has a, uh, a pretty fraught military history of its own. Um, and the Germans are very conscious of their 20th century blood soaked history. They are not comfortable being involved in this kind of thing, but I think the Germans. Both for kind of a perspective of geopolitics, uh, geopolitical reality and also moral reality. Knew that they had to help Ukraine resist this invasion. They just needed the political cover to do it. So I don’t think this is something that is allowing NATO to kind of reach some new level of, uh, coherence and integration in unity. I think it just basically was a political compromise to get a really. Distracting an embarrassing issue off the table.

Jordan This is the last thing I want to ask you, and it’s something I’ve seen you write about and talk about before. You know, taking the potential coming escalation of this war, as well as the fact that the war is still raging after nearly a year. Uh, combining that with the episode of the past week, um, including Chinese American, I don’t, maybe don’t want to call it brinksmanship, but not, not too far removed from that as well. The 2024 Republican primary, uh, picking up with the spectre of Donald Trump, uh, and whatever his relationship is with Putin.

Matt Gurney Still there.

Jordan I started this by asking you if this war was becoming more, geopolitics in general, becoming more fraught by the day? We keep waiting for it to calm down and it keeps not doing that.

Matt Gurney You know what I, I have learned over the years that I am inclined to be a pessimist. Uh, I’m quite cheerful in my own personal life because I have low expectations, man, gimme a cold beer, a pound of wings, and a game to watch. And I’m in a great mood. I don’t need much from life. But on the big picture, The geopolitical picture. I think we, I just don’t think we’re heading into a much more challenging economic, political geopolitical era. I think we’re already in it and I think we’re having a hard time seeing it because, well first of all, normalcy bias is a hell of a drug. And I also think because we’re early enough into this, uh, more challenging geopolitical era. That it still feels like an exception. We’re still thinking in terms of that post Cold War era of, you know, the end of history and the peace dividend and all that good stuff. It’s gonna take us a while, I think, to look around and realize that this is how we live now. And I, I have written. Many columns about this. It’s become something of a personal mantra of mine. I think our expectations are a problem and people get very touchy when I say that cuz they think I’m telling them that they personally expect too much. That’s not what I mean by that. What I mean is normalcy bias. You and I are around the same age. We grew up in, in roughly similar circumstances, in, in roughly, uh, the same uh, area.

Jordan Mm-hmm.

Matt Gurney Nuclear escalation was not something that was on our, you know, when we were growing up as kids, we weren’t worried about China. We weren’t worried about Russia. We weren’t worried about global migration. Patterns changing be-cause, of climate change. We weren’t worried about geopolitical instability, uh, being triggered by food shortages and water shortages and, Droughts and things like that. We also certainly weren’t worried about the political stability of the United States. These are all things we have to be worried about right now. And I think there’s one hell of an emotional and a mental leg, for many Canadians and many others in the West getting our heads in the game. You and I talk about this a lot, I think, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna blow our cover of our off air conversations, but I think it’s fair to say we’re generally on the same page on this one here. We’ve got to wake up to this and I don’t really see that happening yet. What I still see is what I would consider a lot of politics as usual, where you’ll hear Anita Anand, the defense minister talk about today. We are pleased to announce, you know, x million of dollars or x billion of dollars. On this, and this is committing, this shows our government’s commitment to the Canadian Armed Forces, or today we are partnering with our allies to apply this sanction on Russia and all this stuff, right? They’re talking about inputs.

Jordan I want us to talk about outputs here. I wanna know, are we better equipped today as a, as a country? For a changing political environment than we were five years ago. I want to know whether our sanctions are making Russia less able to continue its wars here. All I hear is input talk, and I think a lot of what we’re doing right now is not actually to kinda battle proof our country, and I just don’t mean military. I mean economically, socially, politically. 


Matt Gurney I, I don’t think we’re actually serious about it yet. I think we’re still in the tokenistic political messaging stage.

Jordan That ain’t good man, because we are at the mercy of events. I think Covid should have taught us that. I honestly don’t know if we’ve learned that lesson, and it makes me wonder what might come later that will really drive the lesson home. 


Matt Gurney Yeah, I keep waiting for something, uh, big enough for us all to be like, we gotta take this upcoming century seriously. And, uh, like I said, it keeps not happening. I wrote a column just over a year ago, and it was right after the, those big BC floods, and you and I spoke about it at the time that, uh, the Atmospheric River. 
I wrote a column at the time and it was one of my grammar columns. But I’ll tell you, man, nothing has changed my mind since. I wrote the column that said that only a lot of dead Canadians will knock our governments out of our complacency. I really desperately want to be wrong about this, but nothing has happened in the year and a bit since I wrote that column that has actually made me think that I was, I want you to be wrong about that too.

Jordan Thank you as always, Matt.

Matt Gurney My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Jordan Matt Gurney writing for the line. That was the big story. For more from us, including past reports on the Ukraine War, you can go to the big story podcast.ca. You can find us on Twitter at the big story. F P N. 
You can always write us an email at hello at the big story podcast.ca. You can call us and leave a message, 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5. You can hear this podcast everywhere you get ’em. If you don’t like using podcast players, you can actually just listen on the website. That’s what I tell my older family members to do sometimes It’s a great place to start and there’s buttons there that will take you to any podcast player you want. You can also, of course, just ask your smart speaker to play the Big Story podcast and that will probably take care of that. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.