Ukraine makes a Mad Max appeal for Australia to send its old ‘hand-me-down’ US tanks: ‘let the Abrams live again’

Kyiv wants Canberra to share some of the US$102 billion energy-and-commodity bonanza it’s enjoyed since the Russia-Ukraine war began

Australia is one of the smallest contributors to Ukraine’s war effort among developed nations. Ukraine has urged it to send its old M1A1 Abrams tanks

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A still from a video posted to social media by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry urging Australia to send some of the 59 M1A1 Abrams tanks it acquired as “hand-me-downs” from the US in 2006. Photo: Twitter/@DefenceU

Published: 1:01pm, 21 Jun 2023Updated: 1:14pm, 21 Jun 2023

“Aussies know a road warrior when they see one,” Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said earlier this month in a video posted to social media urging Australia to send over more tanks.

Featuring rock music blaring over footage from the Mad Max movies portraying battles in a dystopian Australia, the video highlighted a new push to urge Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government to ramp up support as Kyiv confronts Russia’s vast military.

Unspoken is an important statistic: among developed Western nations, Australia is among the smallest contributors to Ukraine despite being a major indirect economic beneficiary of the war.

Ukrainian soldiers fire a Т-80 battle tank that was seized from Russian troops towards Bakhmut on Monday. Ukraine is looking to acquire more lethal aid and supplemental firepower from military powers. Photo: EPA-EFE

In the 15 months since Moscow launched its invasion, the spike in energy and other commodity prices has given Australia around a A$150 billion ($102 billion) export bonanza, according to calculations made by Bloomberg Economics’ James McIntyre, a former government economist.

Yet the country has provided the equivalent of 0.5 per cent of that windfall in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, less than what the likes of Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark have given. That has prompted Australia’s conservative opposition and academics to demand the government give more support.

In the video, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence asked Australia to provide some of the 59 M1A1 Abrams tanks it received from the US more than 15 years ago, now that Canberra is set to acquire newer versions. The video ends with the plea “let the Abrams live again”. The request came ahead of a Nato summit in Lithuania in July that Albanese plans to attend.

“There is a risk of Australia being seen as strategic bystanders – that we talk a good talk but we’re not actually doing much in practical terms,” said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. “It really is up to the Australian government to step up.”