According to a parliamentary source who spoke to AFP on Saturday, Germany, the country that gives the most aid to the war-torn country of Ukraine, intends to cut its bilateral military funding to Kyiv in half by 2025.
Instead, in order to sustain Kyiv, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration will rely on funds derived from Russian assets that have been blocked. No “additional aid” is planned beyond the four billion euros ($4.4 billion) allocated in the upcoming budget for the year.
Berlin provided eight billion euros in help this year.
To compensate, Germany is counting on “the creation, within the framework of the G7 and the European Union, of a financial instrument using frozen Russian assets”, said a separate source from inside the finance ministry.
According to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, which said in its weekend edition that the move was a part of an agreement between the chancellor of the center-left Social Democratic party and the liberal Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the sources were corroborating separate press stories.
The liberal FDP party, the Greens, and the Social Democrats have been in a hard debate over the 2025 budget as part of their government alliance.
The finance minister has urged his colleagues to cut back on spending in order to uphold a constitutional provision meant to keep the government from incurring excessive debt.
However the budget is still subject to discussions before being adopted by the end of the year.
Ukraine’s allies have been working on a mechanism to allow part of the $300 billion of Russian assets frozen worldwide to be used to support Kyiv in its war with Moscow.
