Ger­many and the Unit­ed States said Wednes­day they will send bat­tle tanks to Ukraine, the first stage of a co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort by the West to pro­vide dozens of the heavy weapons to help Kyiv break com­bat stale­mates as Rus­sia’s in­va­sion en­ters its 12th month.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said the U.S. will send 31 M1 Abrams bat­tle tanks to Ukraine, re­vers­ing months of per­sis­tent ar­gu­ments by Wash­ing­ton that the tanks were too dif­fi­cult for Ukrain­ian troops to op­er­ate and main­tain.

The U.S. de­ci­sion fol­lows Ger­many agree­ing to send 14 Leop­ard 2 A6 tanks from its own stocks. Ger­many had said the Leop­ards would not be sent un­less the U.S. put its Abrams on the ta­ble, not want­i­ng to in­cur Rus­sia’s wrath with­out the U.S. sim­i­lar­ly com­mit­ting its own tanks.

“This is the re­sult of in­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions, once again, with our al­lies and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners,” Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz told Ger­man law­mak­ers. “It was right and it is im­por­tant that we didn’t let our­selves be dri­ven (in­to mak­ing the de­ci­sion).”

Biden said Eu­ro­pean al­lies have agreed to send enough tanks to equip two Ukrain­ian tank bat­tal­ions, or a to­tal of 62 tanks

“With spring ap­proach­ing, Ukrain­ian forces are work­ing to de­fend the ter­ri­to­ry they hold and prepar­ing for ad­di­tion­al counter of­fens­es,” Biden said. “To lib­er­ate their land, they need to be able to counter Rus­sia’s evolv­ing tac­tics and strat­e­gy on the bat­tle­field in the very near term.”

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion at the news. Sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries have equipped their armies with Leop­ard 2 tanks, and Ger­many’s an­nounce­ment means they can give some of their stocks to Ukraine.

“Ger­man main bat­tle tanks, fur­ther broad­en­ing of de­fense sup­port and train­ing mis­sions, green light for part­ners to sup­ply sim­i­lar weapons. Just heard about these im­por­tant and time­ly de­ci­sions in a call with Olaf Scholz,” Ze­len­skyy wrote on Twit­ter. “Sin­cere­ly grate­ful to the chan­cel­lor and all our friends in (Ger­many).”

Scholz spoke on the phone with U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron, British Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak and Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Gior­gia Mel­oni on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, the Ger­man chan­cellery said in a state­ment. The ex­change fo­cused on the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine and con­tin­ued sup­port for Ukraine’s fight against Russ­ian ag­gres­sion.

All five lead­ers agreed to con­tin­ue mil­i­tary sup­port to Ukraine in close Eu­ro-At­lantic co­or­di­na­tion.

The long-await­ed de­ci­sion came af­ter U.S. of­fi­cials re­vealed Tues­day a pre­lim­i­nary agree­ment for the Unit­ed States to send M1 Abrams tanks to help Ukraine’s troops push back Russ­ian forces that re­main en­trenched in the coun­try’s east al­most a year af­ter Rus­sia in­vad­ed its neigh­bor. The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause the de­ci­sion has not yet been made pub­lic.

It is not clear when or how the tanks would be de­liv­ered to Ukraine, or how soon they could have an im­pact on the bat­tle­field. Mil­i­tary an­a­lysts have said Russ­ian forces are thought to be prepar­ing for a spring of­fen­sive.

The $400 mil­lion pack­age an­nounced Wednes­day al­so in­cludes eight M88 re­cov­ery ve­hi­cles — tank-like tracked ve­hi­cles that can tow the Abrams if it gets stuck.

Al­to­geth­er, France, the U.K., the U.S., Poland, Ger­many, the Nether­lands and Swe­den will send hun­dreds of tanks and heavy ar­mored ve­hi­cles to for­ti­fy Ukraine as it en­ters a new phase of the war and at­tempts to break through en­trenched Russ­ian lines.

While Ukraine’s sup­port­ers pre­vi­ous­ly have sup­plied tanks, they were So­vi­et mod­els in the stock­piles of coun­tries that once were in Moscow’s sphere of in­flu­ence but are now aligned with the West. Ze­len­skyy and oth­er Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials in­sist­ed their forces need more mod­ern West­ern-de­signed tanks.

NA­TO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg wel­comed Ger­many’s de­ci­sion. “At a crit­i­cal mo­ment in Rus­sia’s war, these can help Ukraine to de­fend it­self, win and pre­vail as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twit­ter.

Rus­sia’s am­bas­sador to Ger­many, Sergey Nechayev, called Berlin’s de­ci­sion to send Leop­ard 2 tanks to Ukraine “ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous,” say­ing 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.

Scholz had in­sist­ed that any de­ci­sion to pro­vide Ukraine with pow­er­ful Leop­ard 2 tanks would need to be tak­en in con­junc­tion with Ger­many’s al­lies, chiefly the U.S. By get­ting Wash­ing­ton to com­mit some of its own tanks, Berlin hopes to share the risk of any back­lash from Rus­sia.

Ekke­hard Brose, head of the Ger­man mil­i­tary’s Fed­er­al Acad­e­my for Se­cu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, said ty­ing the Unit­ed States in­to the de­ci­sion was cru­cial, to avoid Eu­rope fac­ing a nu­clear-armed Rus­sia alone.

But he al­so not­ed the deep­er his­toric sig­nif­i­cance of the de­ci­sion.

“Ger­man-made tanks will face off against Russ­ian tanks in Ukraine once more,” he said, adding that this was “not an easy thought” for Ger­many, which takes its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the hor­rors of World War II se­ri­ous­ly.

“And yet it is the right de­ci­sion,” Brose said, ar­gu­ing that it was up to West­ern democ­ra­cies to help Ukraine stop Rus­sia’s mil­i­tary cam­paign.

Ger­man De­fense Min­is­ter Boris Pis­to­rius cau­tioned that it would take about three months for the first tanks to be de­ployed in Ukraine. He de­scribed the Leop­ard 2 as “the best bat­tle tank in the world.”

“This is an im­por­tant game change, pos­si­bly al­so for this war, at least in the cur­rent phase,” he said.

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment said it planned to swift­ly be­gin train­ing Ukrain­ian tank crews in Ger­many. The pack­age be­ing put to­geth­er would al­so in­clude lo­gis­tics, am­mu­ni­tion and main­te­nance.

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov de­scribed Ger­man and U.S. in­ten­tions as a “a rather dis­as­trous plan.”

“I am con­vinced that many spe­cial­ists un­der­stand the ab­sur­di­ty of this idea,” Peskov said.

“Sim­ply be­cause of tech­no­log­i­cal as­pects, this is a rather dis­as­trous plan. The main thing is, this is a com­plete­ly ob­vi­ous over­es­ti­ma­tion of the po­ten­tial (the sup­ply of tanks) would add to the armed forces of Ukraine. It is yet an­oth­er fal­la­cy, a rather pro­found one,” the Krem­lin of­fi­cial said.

Peskov pre­dict­ed “these tanks will burn down just like all the oth­er ones. … Ex­cept they cost a lot, and this will fall on the shoul­ders of Eu­ro­pean tax­pay­ers.” he added.

Ger­many has al­ready pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able amounts of mil­i­tary hard­ware to Ukraine, in­clud­ing pow­er­ful PzH 2000 how­itzers, Iris-T air-de­fense sys­tems and Gepard self-pro­pelled an­ti-air­craft guns that have proved high­ly ef­fec­tive against Russ­ian drones. It al­so an­nounced plans to sup­ply a Pa­tri­ot air-de­fense bat­tery and Marder in­fantry fight­ing ve­hi­cles.

Ahead of Scholz’s of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment, mem­bers of his three-par­ty coali­tion gov­ern­ment wel­comed the Cab­i­net’s agree­ment to sup­ply the do­mes­ti­cal­ly made tanks.

“The Leop­ard’s freed!” Ger­man law­mak­er Ka­trin Go­er­ing-Eckardt, a se­nior Green par­ty law­mak­er, said.

How­ev­er, two small­er op­po­si­tion par­ties crit­i­cized the move. The far-right Al­ter­na­tive for Ger­many, which has friend­ly ties to Rus­sia, called the de­ci­sion “ir­re­spon­si­ble and dan­ger­ous.”

“Ger­many risks be­ing drawn di­rect­ly in­to the war as a re­sult,” par­ty co-leader Tino Chru­pal­la said.

Scholz sought to re­as­sure peo­ple in his coun­try who were con­cerned about the im­pli­ca­tions of send­ing tanks to Ukraine.

“Trust me, trust the gov­ern­ment,” he said. “By act­ing in an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly co­or­di­nat­ed man­ner, we will en­sure that this sup­port is pos­si­ble with­out the risks to our coun­try grow­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion.”

Pol­ish Prime Min­is­ter Ma­teusz Moraw­iec­ki, who had pre­vi­ous­ly called in­to ques­tion Ger­many’s com­mit­ment to help­ing Ukraine, thanked Scholz on Twit­ter for the “big step to­wards stop­ping Rus­sia.”

Oth­er Eu­ro­pean na­tions, such as Fin­land and Spain, in­di­cat­ed a will­ing­ness Wednes­day to part with their own Leop­ard or sim­i­lar bat­tle tanks as part of a larg­er coali­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak of Britain, which had said it planned to send 14 of its Chal­lenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, wel­comed Ger­many’s de­ci­sion to fur­ther “strength­en Ukraine’s de­fen­sive fire­pow­er.”

“To­geth­er, we are ac­cel­er­at­ing our ef­forts to en­sure Ukraine wins this war and se­cures a last­ing peace,” Sunak said on Twit­ter.

Still, it isn’t clear whether Ukraine will re­ceive the es­ti­mat­ed 300 tanks that an­a­lysts say are re­quired to keep Rus­sia from ad­vanc­ing in Donet­sk, Luhan­sk and Za­por­izhzhia provinces and to press a coun­terof­fen­sive in the coun­try’s south­east.