By RACHAEL BUNYAN FOR MAILONLINE
A Russian company today said it will offer five million roubles ($70,000) in cash to the first soldiers who destroy or capture Western tanks in Ukraine after the Kremlin vowed that any allied armored vehicles shipped to Kyiv would ‘burn’.
The United States, Germany and more Western allies are lining up to join Britain in sending dozens of heavy tanks to Ukraine over the next few months to help boost the country’s military capacity as the war approaches the 12-month mark.
The decision by the NATO allies has been criticized by the Kremlin as a dangerous escalation, with Moscow warning the new Western supplies will ‘burn like all the rest’.
Now a Russian company – Fores, a Urals-based firm which makes supplies for the energy industry – is offering cash payments to Russian servicemen who ‘capture or destroy’ German-made Leopard 2 or U.S.-made Abrams tanks.
The company said it will pay five million roubles ($70,000) to the first Russian soldier to destroy one of the tanks, and 500,000 roubles ($7000) for all subsequent attacks.
Echoing language used by Russian officials and pro-war state TV hosts, Fores said NATO was pumping Ukraine with an ‘unlimited’ amount of arms and escalating the conflict.
It also said it would pay a 15 million roubles ($210,000) bounty on Western-made fighter jets, should they ever be delivered to Ukraine.
Washington is sending 31 of its fast-moving M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, while Berlin will initially supply at least 14 Leopard 2 tanks and give permission to other NATO countries – including Poland, Norway, Finland and Spain – to deliver their own to Kyiv.
The UK has already said it will send 14 Challenger 2 tanks and Ukrainian troops on Saturday landed in Britain to learn how to use the next-generation battle tanks against Russian soldiers.
While a total of 321 heavy tanks have been promised to Ukraine by several countries, according to Kyiv’s ambassador to France, they could take months to appear on the battlefield.
Ukraine is keen to speed up the delivery of heavy weapons as both sides in the war are expected to launch spring offensives in the coming weeks.
Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergey Nechayev, said last week that Berlin’s decision to send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine was ‘extremely dangerous’.
He said it ‘shifts the conflict to a new level of confrontation and contradicts the statements of German politicians about their reluctance to get involved in it’.
Meanwhile, France has not yet committed to sending a squadron of its Leclerc tanks, but President Emmanuel Macron is now under pressure to match his allies’ offer of heavy armor.
Ukraine had been relying on Soviet-era T-72 tanks but its military will be modernized with the shipment of NATO tanks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was facing a difficult situation in Donetsk and needed faster weapons supplies and new types of weaponry, just days after allies agreed to provide Kyiv with heavy battle tanks.
‘Russia wants the war to drag on and exhaust our forces. So, we have to make time our weapon. We have to speed up events, speed up supplies and open up new weapons options for Ukraine.’
Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Monday that as the United States had decided to supply tanks to Ukraine, it made no sense for Russia to talk to Kyiv or its Western ‘puppet masters’.
On Sunday however a Kremlin spokesperson told RIA, that Russian President Vladimir Putin was open to contacts with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Scholz was quoted by the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Sunday as saying, ‘I will also speak to Putin again because it is necessary to speak’.
‘The onus is on Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine to end this horrendous, senseless war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives already,’ he added.
By David Vergun , Department of Defense News
So how is the US able to continue to supply arms to Ukraine, while claiming to be a neutral power in the conflict?
On May 9, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022.”
The act authorized the administration, through fiscal year 2023, to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The act would exempt the administration from certain provisions of law that govern the loan or lease of military equipment to foreign countries, such as the five-year limit on the duration of the loan or the requirement that receiving countries pay all costs incurred by the United States in leasing the defense equipment.
Any loan or lease of military equipment to Ukraine would still be subject to all applicable laws concerning the return of such equipment.
Lend-lease has been used before, during World War II.
At that time, a total of $50.1 billion, equivalent to $690 billion in 2020, worth of supplies were shipped. In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union and the remaining $2.6 billion to other allies.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/lend-lease-act-1
The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 stated that the U.S. government could lend or lease (rather than sell) war supplies to any nation deemed “vital to the defense of the United States.”
Under this policy, the United States was able to supply military aid to its foreign allies during World War II, while still remaining officially neutral in the conflict.
Most importantly, passage of the Lend-Lease Act enabled a struggling Great Britain to continue fighting against Germany virtually on its own until the United States entered World War II late in 1941.
Neutrality in Wartime
In the decades following World War I, many Americans remained extremely wary of becoming involved in another costly international conflict. (Just like today) Even as fascist regimes like Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler took aggressive action in Europe the 1930s, isolationist members of Congress pushed through a series of laws limiting how the United States could respond.
But after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and full-scale war broke out again in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that while the United States would remain neutral by law, it was impossible “that every American remain neutral in thought as well.”
Before passage of the Neutrality Act of 1939, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to allow the sale of military supplies to allies like France and Britain on a “cash-and-carry” basis: They had to pay cash for American-made supplies, and then transport the supplies on their own ships.
But by the summer of 1940, France and much of northern Europe had fallen to the Nazis, and Britain was fighting virtually alone against Germany on land, at sea and in the air. The London Blitz and other German offenses had taken a serious toll on British morale and military strength.
After the new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, appealed personally to Roosevelt for help, the U.S. president agreed to exchange more than 50 outdated American destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland, which would be used as U.S. air and naval bases.
That December, with Britain’s currency and gold reserves dwindling, Churchill warned Roosevelt that his country would not be able to pay cash for military supplies or shipping much longer.
Though he had recently been re-elected on a platform promising to keep America out of World War II, Roosevelt wanted to support Great Britain against Germany.
After hearing Churchill’s appeal, he began working to convince Congress (and the American public) that providing more direct aid to Britain was in the nation’s own interest.
In December 1940, Roosevelt introduced a new policy initiative whereby the United States would lend, rather than sell, military supplies to Great Britain for use in the fight against Germany. Payment for the supplies would be deferred, and could come in any form Roosevelt deemed satisfactory.
“We must be the great arsenal of democracy,” Roosevelt declared in one of his signature “fireside chats” on December 29, 1940. “For us, this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.”
Lend-Lease, as Roosevelt’s plan became known, ran into strong opposition among isolationist members of Congress, as well as those who believed the policy gave the president himself too much power (Just like today).
During the debate over the bill, which continued for two months, Roosevelt’s administration and supporters in Congress argued convincingly that providing aid to allies like Great Britain was a military necessity for the United States.
“We are buying…not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare,” Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“By our delay during the past six years, while Germany was preparing, we find ourselves unprepared and unarmed, facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy.”
Finally, in March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act (subtitled “An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States”) and Roosevelt signed it into law.
Roosevelt quickly took advantage of his authority under the new law, ordering large quantities of U.S. food and war materials to be shipped to Britain from U.S. ports through the new Office of Lend-Lease Administration.
The supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food. By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy was extended to include other U.S. allies, including France, China and the Soviet Union.
Through the end of World War II the United States would use it to provide a total of some $50 billion in aid (equal to $690 billion in 2020 dollars) to more than 30 nations around the globe, from the Free French movement led by Charles de Gaulle and the governments-in-exile of Poland, the Netherlands and Norway to Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru.
For Roosevelt, Lend-Lease was not motivated primarily by altruism or generosity, but was intended to serve the interest of the United States by helping to defeat Nazi Germany without entering the war outright—at least not until the nation was prepared for it, both militarily and in terms of public opinion.
Through Lend-Lease, the United States also succeeded in becoming the “arsenal of democracy” during World War II, thus securing its preeminent place in the international economic and political order once the war drew to a close.
Now back to the current situation.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act.
Much like Roosevelt’s 1941 program, this act allowed the U.S. government to lend or lease a wide range of military equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.
Resulting from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the current Lend-Lease Act exempted the Biden administration from provisions of law that govern the loan or lease of military equipment to foreign countries.
So far, Biden has provided $27.1 billion dollars to Ukraine under his lend lease program.
What do you think folks? Was this money well spent?
How long should we continue providing funds to Ukraine?
Should there be a cap on what we will provide?
Do you think we will ever be paid back?