WASHINGTON, Jan 24 - The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send US-made Abrams tanks to Ukraine and could make an announcement as soon as this week, CNN reported Tuesday citing three US officials familiar with the deliberations.

The timing around the actual delivery of the tanks is still unclear and it normally takes several months to train troops to use the tanks effectively, officials said.

An announcement about the tanks could be part of an attempt to break a diplomatic logjam with Germany, which indicated to the US last week that it would not send its Leopard tanks to Ukraine unless the US also agreed to send its M1 Abrams tanks.

Top national security officials in the administration have been actively considering steps they could take to convince Germany to send the Leopards.

On Friday, at a meeting of western defense leaders in Germany, the US and its allies failed to convince German officials to send the Leopards as part of Berlin’s next round of military assistance to Ukraine. But on Tuesday, the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said “We are preparing our decision, which will come very soon” on the tanks.

Later on Tuesday German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has decided to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine after “months of debate.”

The Biden administration has never taken the possibility of shipping American tanks entirely off the table, but US officials said publicly last week that now is not the right time to send the 70-ton M1 Abrams tanks because they are costly and require a significant amount of training to operate.

The tanks have instead repeatedly been floated as a long-term option – even as critics say the right time is now, as Ukraine braces for the possibility Russia will mobilize more troops and launch a new offensive.

Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky has consistently asked Western allies for modern tanks as his country prepares braces for an expected major Russian counteroffensive in the spring.

The UK has already announced it will send 12 of their Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, crossing what had previously appeared to be a red line for the US and its European allies. A US announcement it is sending tanks would increase the pressure on Germany as it decides whether to authorize a transfer of Leopards. There are believed be around 2,000 in Europe and Poland on Tuesday formally asked Berlin to approve a transfer of some its Leopards to Ukraine.

Any announcement would be a long-term contribution of Abrams, meaning the Ukrainians will not have them on the ground anytime soon because of the training and getting the sustainment framework established, a former defense official with knowledge of the deliberations told CNN. For now, the pending announcement by the US is more to make Germany feel more comfortable in providing their own tanks.

“These are not going to be tanks that are going to be on the ground next week or next month,” the former official said.

Given the last week’s announcement of a $2.5 billion drawdown of US stocks to send to Ukraine, an announcement is unlikely to be another drawdown. Instead, the provision of tanks to Ukraine could come from a new contract under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) or a refurbishment of M-1 Abrams tanks from another country such as Poland, which recently closed a deal to buy more Abrams and has been vocal in its insistence on sending tank to Ukraine. (cnn/ez)