German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has agreed to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 battle tanks, Al Jazeera reported. 

The news that Berlin will provide battle tanks to Kyiv comes as officials in the United States told media that Washington is also poised to start a process that would eventually send dozens of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

It also comes as Ukraine dismissed several senior officials as part of an anti-corruption drive, an issue that has underscored the importance of outside support at the moment.

Washington was expected to announce as soon as Wednesday that it will send M1 Abrams tanks and Berlin has decided to dispatch Leopard 2 tanks, Reuters reported citing unnamed sources.

While there was no official confirmation, officials in Kyiv hailed what they see as a possible game changer in a conflict that is now 11 months old - even if the rumored tank numbers, in the dozens, would be short of the hundreds they say they need.

"A few hundred tanks for our tank crews .... This is what is going to become a real punching fist of democracy," Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's administration, wrote on Telegram.

Zelenskyy, who turns 45 on Wednesday, again pressed Western allies to provide their most modern battle tanks, saying "the need is larger" in his nightly video address on Tuesday.

Russia has warned that supplies of modern offensive weaponry to Ukraine would escalate the conflict, with some officials saying its allies were leading the world into a "global catastrophe."

Deliveries of battle tanks by the United States would be "another blatant provocation", Anatoly Antonov, Russia's U.S. ambassador, said on Wednesday.

"It is obvious that Washington is purposefully trying to inflict a strategic defeat on us," Antonov said in remarks published on the embassy's Telegram messaging app.

"American tanks will be destroyed by our military in the same way all other samples of NATO equipment are being destroyed," Antonov said.

(Cover: This picture taken on May 19, 2022 shows soldiers on a Polish Leopard tank as troops from Poland, the United States, France and Sweden take part in the DEFENDER-Europe 22 military exercise, in Nowogard, Poland. /CFP)

(With input from Reuters)