Germany tightens the tap on military aid to Ukraine

The current Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk area, to create a buffer zone according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, risks running out of military support at some point, as the government in Berlin has halved Germany's contribution to the authorities' war effort from Kiev. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a budget compromise was reached last week between Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and governing partners from the FDP, according to which Scholz asked Finance Minister Christian Lindner not to approve any further aid military for Ukraine, except for the one included in the negotiations between the two parties. However, the cited source claims that the money for Ukraine's aid could come from frozen revenues from the assets of the Russian central bank, following the model established by the G-7 states, which seized about $300 billion of these assets and decided to grant Kiev a loan of 50 billion dollars from the income of those assets.

The chairman of the German-Ukrainian friendship parliamentary group Robin Wagener (from the Green party) sharply criticized the plans of the federal government not to plan other budget resources to support the authorities in Kiev. Robin Wagener, who is an alternate member of the Defense Committee and a member of the Bundestag's Foreign Affairs Committee, told the quoted source: "The Government's decision means sacrificing peace and freedom for the sole purpose of reducing the public debt. We are indeed in a tight budget situation, but there is no desire on the part of the Government to urgently find a solution to solve both the problems we are facing. The motto "First the country, then the party" should be applied in the face of such essential problems".

The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Oleksij Makejev, protested the federal government's decision to cut funding for Ukraine. The Ukrainian official wrote in an official post on the X network: "Saving military aid to Ukraine means jeopardizing the security of Europe. This would be fatal and must be prevented. The means are there, it's a matter of political will."

The decision was first reported by Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS), which announced last weekend that the federal government is no longer releasing additional money for military support to Ukraine, with the financial freeze already in effect. Moreover, according to FAS, no other military aid is planned in the 2025 budget, in which only materials that have already been approved will be delivered. The cited source also claims that Chancellor Olaf Scholz himself requested that the additional requests from the Ministry of Defense no longer be approved, a request that is added to the one that the Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, sent to the Federal Minister of Defense on August 5 , Boris Pistorius.

As a result of these decisions, Germany's military support to Ukraine would be almost halved next year and then fall to less than a tenth of the current total in 2027. The quoted source also claims that Minister Christian Lindner has sent the Ministry of Defense : "Nevertheless, it is clear that there should not be a sudden cessation of aid to Ukraine. In the future, the money should no longer come from the federal budget, but from the frozen balances of the Russian central bank."

The federal government's decision had immediate effect. For example, an available IRIS-T anti-aircraft system that German industry offered after the bombing of a children's clinic in Kiev was no longer delivered because the federal government did not want to finance it as aid to Ukraine was already planned for the year in course and the maximum limit of four billion euros for 2025 has already been exceeded. In 2026, three billion euros will be allocated to Ukraine, and for the years 2027 and 2028, only half a billion euros each.

In the light of Germany's decision, the situation of military support for Ukraine risks getting worse if Donald Trump, who opposed increasing support for the authorities in Kiev and said he would take steps to establish peace in the region. In this situation, the entire financial burden would have to be supported by the European Union, but it is hard to believe that it will succeed, as long as Germany seems to be opposed to increasing its own public debt at the moment. A group will probably form within the EU bloc around France, known for President Emmanuel Macron's policy of continuing military support for Ukraine, which will continue to supply equipment and weapons to the authorities from Kiev.