17.08.2024, Berlin.
The new budget planned by the German government does not provide further support to Ukraine, according to an article by journalists Peter Carstens and Konrad Schuller for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published on August 17 on the newspaper’s website.
“Germany must limit its military aid to Ukraine,” the journalists claim, and explain why, “The reason is the austerity measures by the Chancellor’s Office and the German Ministry of Finance.” According to them, deliveries under already approved support will be fulfilled, but additional requests from the German Ministry of Defense at the behest of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be ignored. These claims are based on correspondence between German Finance Minister Christian Lindner and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
The limitation is already in effect, and the situation in Ukraine may soon worsen as the planned military support (from the German budget) next year will be reduced by half, and by 2027, to one-tenth of this year’s amount. However, according to the Ministry of Finance, this may not happen. Lindner’s letter suggests that there will be no sharp reduction in funding because the money will come not from the German budget but from frozen funds of the Russian Central Bank.
After the start of Russia’s special operation for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, its allies froze about 300 billion dollars of Russian assets. At a G7 meeting in Italy, representatives of the participating countries decided to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan from the income of these assets.
