Germany, which overcame its initial reluctance to support Ukraine to become the country’s biggest European supplier of military aid, looks poised to change course as the finance minister said the government would slash future assistance by half in order to fulfill other spending priorities.
That appeared to be Berlin’s unequivocal message to Ukraine on Wednesday as the government detailed its preliminary 2025 budget, in which military aid to Ukraine is slated to be cut by half to just €4 billion, according to a draft seen by POLITICO.
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BERLIN — Germany, which overcame its initial reluctance to support Ukraine to become the country’s biggest European supplier of military aid, looks poised to change course as the finance minister said the government would slash future assistance by half in order to fulfill other spending priorities.
Speaking after the cabinet approved the draft budget, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said Ukraine would have to rely more on funds from “European sources” as well as hoped-for income from frozen Russian assets.
The decision to cut aid to Ukraine, which was first reported by Reuters, resolves a mystery surrounding the German coalition’s unexpected agreement over the budget following an all-night bargaining session two weeks ago.
Scholz’s government has dragged its feet on helping Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s onslaught, drawing ridicule for an early offer to send helmets weeks before the full-scale invasion.
“The many promises of the chancellor and his defense minister to continue to support Ukraine are turning out to be hollow phrases,” Ingo Gädechens, a lawmaker from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told POLITICO.
At the same time, the coalition has been at odds over how to finance its own military needs in order to fulfill Scholz’s promises to rebuild Germany’s armed forces and meet NATO’s annual spending target of 2 percent of GDP.
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