German Finance Minister Christian Lindner has issued a request to the country’s defense ministry calling for a limit to military assistance to Ukraine, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported on Saturday. According to Lindner, the country’s current budget plan is not capable of allocating funds to Kiev.
The request was made in a letter addressed to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and specified that only military aid that has already been approved can be delivered to Kiev. Additional applications from the defense ministry will no longer be accepted, even if issued at the behest of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
FAZ noted that the block on newly approvals is already in effect and that Berlin would halve its military aid to Ukraine next year. In 2027, the assistance is expected to decline to less than one tenth of its current volume.
Up to €8 billion in aid to Ukraine has been scheduled for 2024, and the planned maximum of €4 billion for 2025 already exceeds available funds, the media outlet noted, adding that only €3 billion is planned for 2026, and €500 million each for 2027 and 2028.
“End of the event. The pot is empty,” an unnamed source in the federal government told FAZ, stressing that Berlin has “reached a point where Germany can no longer make any promises to Ukraine.”
The newspaper noted that the urge comes amid Lindner’s push for harsh austerity measures; these have already been imposed on all German ministries except defense. The finance minister has been resisting intense pressure from Scholz and Economy Minister Robert Habeck to suspend the country’s constitutional limit on debt to allow for the cost of providing military aid to Kiev amid the Ukrainian conflict.
Germany is the second biggest backer of Ukraine after the US. Berlin has provided and committed military aid of at least €28 billion ($30.3 billion) to Kiev in current and future pledges. This includes advanced military equipment such as Leopard 2 tanks, Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and US-made Patriot air-defense systems.
Lindner reportedly doesn’t expect the country’s assistance to Ukraine to drop, as the minister hopes to cover the expenses not with federal budget funds, but through the use of Russian central bank assets that were frozen by Kiev’s Western allies shortly after the conflict escalated.
Nearly $300 billion belonging to Russia’s central bank has been immobilized by the EU and G7 nations as part of Ukraine-related sanctions. In May, Brussels approved a plan to use the interest earned on the frozen assets to support Ukraine’s recovery and defense. Under the agreement, 90% of the proceeds are expected to go into an EU-run fund for Ukrainian military aid, with the other 10% allocated to supporting Kiev in other ways.
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