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.
Germany is increasing military spending. Not by as much as the defence ministry would like, but it’s definitely not a cut.
As to the Ukraine aid the government is pointing at those Russian central bank funds, interest on those more than makes up for the shortfall: They’re in fact estimating that the money they budgeted won’t even be used up now that that stuff is available and, unsurprisingly, has priority. Why should Germany spend money when we can make the Russians spend it.
Seriously? Don’t bother. We’ve written you off as fickle bastards long ago and are completely prepared for a Trump re-election and the US going full isolationist. Russia will react with a renewment of effort, Europe won’t falter, Putin won’t know what’s happening (completely convinced that you somehow rule us), he will be replaced not by kinder but at least a bit saner people, war will end.
And definitely don’t wait for us to shape our policy to be convenient for your own political struggles. We’ve got more important stuff to do.
Also, do have a look here. Germany spent around 40bn so far, the US 70bn. The US has about 4x the population. We’re spending more than twice as much as the US per capita, and that’s not even counting in that most of what the US sent was military hardware that they would have decommissioned, anyway, valued at replacement cost, not what it actually cost you: Negative amounts, because you don’t have to spend money on actually decommissioning it.