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
and in that mass shooting at a dance studio, we re learning what investigators found inside the gunman s home as the death toll rises this morning. the war in ukraine, russia reinforcing its front lines by adding tens of thousands of troops to the battlefield. but they re arriving unprepared as moscow builds up for a spring offensive. from new mexico to maine, the nation braces for a multi-based storm threat of snow and tornados that covers 2,000 miles. and a key hearing today in georgia over whether donald trump broke the law when he tried to overturn the election. the findings are in, but will the public see them? cnn this morning starts right now. we re going to begin with yet another grim reminder that our nation is suffering from what seems to be a never-ending crisis, a problem that is unique to america. california s reeling from three back-to-back mass shootings, investigators say a gunman killed seven people at a mushroom farm and trucking facility in a smal
these compiled from open source and only put tanks in this list if they have visual evidence they were destroyed. look at russia, more than 1,600, ukraine, close to 500. you re getting over 2,000 tanks destroyed. many more deployed so when you look at the numbers coming from the other side, even when you add up the u.s., the german contributions, the british contributions, it s still a relatively small number and as the president noted it s going to take a number of months for these to get into action. so, jim, these are really important tactical capabilities that the ukrainians are seeking. so how big of a role have tanks played already in this war so far? well, the biggest role they played, frankly, is giving a window into russian losses, right? you remember those early russian attempts to get into the more central part of the country to try to take the capital kyiv, for instance, there were tank graveyards there because the ukrainians had such success
tanks have not done well in this war. in general? russia has lost these are conservative estimates, 1600 tanks, ukraine, close to 500. these are almost certainly underestimates. but let s take the numbers as they are, thousands of tanks have been destroyed already. they re big targets. ukraine had enormous success against russian tanks in small units, using those javelin shoulder-fired missiles and now relying on bradley fighting vehicles going in as well. they have antitank weapons. they re smaller, they re faster, u.s. officials believe that s the way ukraine should be fighting this war. and to kind of make them pin back with more tank divisions, make them more vulnerable, because russia has great antitank weapons. in fact, one u.s. official said to me the concern is ukraine will have its own tank graveyards like we saw for russian forces at the beginning of the war. one final note, just the numbers we re talking about here, russia has many hundreds of tanks deployed in ukraine