After weeks of bitter discussions, the three member parties of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition seemed to have reached agreement on the draft 2025 budget. But an investigation by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published on Saturday, August 17, served as a reminder of the extent of the divisions running through Berlin's ruling majority on one issue: Ukraine.
According to the leading center-right daily paper, the government, eager for ways to tighten its budget, does not intend to help Kyiv beyond the €8 billion included in the 2024 budget, the €4 billion planned for 2025 and the €3 billion expected in 2026, whereas those in favor of increased military support – including within Scholz's coalition – were counting on additional funding to enable Ukraine to win the war.
Among them is Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). In the spring, he called for an additional €3.8 billion, on top of the €8 billion already earmarked for 2024, to finance sending an IRIS-T air defense system, artillery ammunition and drones to support Kyiv's forces. However, in a letter dated August 5, also addressed to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party), Finance Minister Christian Lindner rejected the proposal.
The president of the center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP), which has made balancing public accounts the core of its policy, Lindner now wants the new funds allocated to Kyiv to come not from national budgets but from the future instrument created by the G7 and the European Union, designed to use the interest generated by the $300 billion in Russian assets frozen around the world to support Ukraine in its war effort against Moscow. The problem is that these funds will not be available until 2025 at the earliest.
Unsurprisingly, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's revelations prompted a strong reaction from authorities in Kyiv. "Europe's security depends on Germany's ability and political will to continue to play a leading role in helping our country," Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, told the daily newspaper Bild on Sunday.
Also unsurprisingly, the conservative opposition CDU/CSU also took a swipe at Scholz's coalition, as it has every time the latter's procrastination and reluctance to supply new armaments has appeared to call into question its support for Ukraine. "The government is playing Donald Trump-style politics, blocking any further aid to Ukraine because of internal political conflicts. The difference is that, by helping Ukraine, Germany is contributing to its own security," reacted MP Norbert Röttgen, former president of the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee (2014-2021).
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