hello and thanks for joining us. i m abby phillip here in washington. now, president biden makes it official. just moments ago, the u.s. is sending abrams tanks to ukraine. that announcement comes just hours after germany revealed that it will send its own leopard 2 tanks to ukraine. germany had been reluctant to do that but ultimately they bent to weeks of intense pressure from western allies. cnn s phil mattingly is over at the white house for us. but let s begin first with our own jim sciutto. jim, can you walk us through what we are talking about here? what are these tanks, and where are they coming from as it relates to what s going into ukraine? reporter: abby, this is a significant move and let s begin with what the capabilities are. this is a german leopard tank then you have the u.s. sending abrams as well. first thing to say about this, highly capable, it s an offensive weapon, not a defensive weapon and the ukrainians hope here, their aim is to use this as a weap
this is a german leopard tank then you have the u.s. sending abrams as well. first thing to say about this, highly capable, it s an offensive weapon, not a defensive weapon and the ukrainians hope here, their aim is to use this as a weapon to retake territory, not just defend, but retake materiality inside its country captured from russia so let s look at the countries that are going to be sending these in. you have the u.s. as you noted, the president announcing 31 abrams tanks, germany sending 14. uk sending 14. poland, some other countries sending a handful too. now, those are not insignificant numbers, but keep in mind you add those up, you re below 1 00. when you put that into context with russian tank forces it doesn t match up. the math doesn t even come close, how do we know that? we don t know the exact number of tanks either the russians or ukrainians have there but we do have a decent sense of how many they ve lost.