The German government will stop new military aid to Ukraine as part of the ruling coalition's plan to reduce spending, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported on Saturday.
The moratorium on new assistance is already in effect and will affect new requests for funding, not previously approved aid, according to the FAZ report, which cited non-public documents and emails as well as discussions with people familiar with the matter.
In a letter sent to the German defense ministry on Aug. 5, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said that future funding would no longer come from Germany's federal budget but from proceeds from frozen Russian assets, according to the German newspaper.
Germany and other G7 countries in June struck a preliminary deal to use the value of some $300 billion of Russia’s sovereign assets immobilized in Western financial institutions to secure a $50 billion loan to Ukraine. But governments have yet to agree on the details of the scheme, and technical talks might drag on for months.
Contentions over Ukraine aid reportedly deepened the rifts in the ruling coalition in Berlin, already tattered by weeks of internal fights over a series of issues from the budget to welfare. Green leader and Economy Minister Robert Habeck said this week he plans to run for chancellor as the Greens’ candidate in the 2025 federal election, casting doubt on the survival of the governing alliance of which he is a member.
Posted by John3262005
6 Comments
It’s the insanely restrictive Merkel-era deficint spending biting them back. That shit should really be thrown out but I guess there’s no realistic path to that. It’s not just the aid, thats really only a minor part (the Bundeswehr has a €28 billion financing gap for the coming years for example) its kneecaping Germany in all areas where public investment is needed. Germany has a relatively low debt ro gdp ratio, its madness they cant stimulate their own economy which by the way drags down the whole of the EU.
Yet anothe reason to hate Merkel even more, though frankly the bar for chancellors had become shockingly low before her.
Most reliable European allies. Although in saying that, given that Germany funds the Russian war machine through it’s insatiable thirst for Russian gas, I don’t see this as a surprise.
German restricting Ukraine aid to fulfill an ideological fiscal concept while its economy struggles from the strategic consequences of having depended so heavily on cheap Russian gas in the first place just about sums it up. To put a cherry on the whole thing they blew up the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant yesterday.
Sucks, but I get it; if you have to make cuts to avoid runaway deficits, this is an easy one, relative to a lot of other domestic programs that will be more painful and more likely to result in electoral blowback and long term unsustainability.
Das kann man echt nicht mehr ernst nehmen. Wir sind ein Witz. !ping GER
Zeitenwende speech was always going to mean nothing in the long run considering the costs would be too high