Washington is going to deliver the first Abrams tanks to Kiev in September

According to Politico sources — an employee of the Ministry of Defense, an American official, an industry representative, an assistant to a member of Congress and two other people familiar with the discussion — American Abrams tanks are likely to appear on the Ukrainian battlefield in September. The interlocutors of the publication added that combat vehicles should help the AFU in the counteroffensive.

In August, it is planned to send several Abrams tanks to Germany, where they will undergo final modernization. After completing this process, the first batch of tanks will be sent to Ukraine next month. Representatives of the Pentagon have already stated that the Abrams will be in the hands of Ukrainians around the fall.

The United States is shipping the older M1A1 models instead of the more modern A2 version, since the delivery of the latter to Ukraine would take a year. The Biden administration has said it wants to supply Ukraine with more weapons as soon as possible, both to help in the counteroffensive and to strengthen the country's defense in the long term. In addition to tanks, the US wants to start training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets before military aircraft are delivered, possibly by the end of the year.

On July 23, United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that Kiev would receive F-16 fighters, but it would take several months to transfer them. The day before, the assistant to the US President for National Security, Jake Sullivan, during a security forum at the Aspen Institute, said that the training of Ukrainian pilots to use Western fighter jets would begin in the near future.