Social Democrat Michael Roth, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, criticized the coalition’s approach to further financing aid to Ukraine. His own party is also part of this coalition.
source: Roth in an interview with the Funke Media Group, as reported by Die Zeit
DetailsSPIEGEL: Roth called it a “fatal signal” from the German government to Ukraine “if no further funds for new military aid are planned in future federal budgets.”
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Roth noted that Ukrainian forces were on the offensive for the first time in many months and that Ukraine now needed the full support of its most important military ally in Europe, Germany.
Quote: “Instead, the debate about the future financing of military aid seems like a veiled abdication of Germany’s responsibility. We cannot make our security dependent on budgetary constraints.”
Further details: The government’s draft budget for 2025, which was approved by the Federal Cabinet in July, allocates around four billion euros to support Ukraine. This amount is unlikely to change even after the new budget compromise agreed on Friday.
In principle, the German government expects that Ukraine will be able to receive greater support in the future through interest from frozen Russian state assets.
Roth stressed that the 50 billion US dollars from the G7 aid fund, which is also to be filled with interest from frozen assets, is “far from sufficient”.
background:
- Previously, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung had reported that the federal government’s current budget planning did not provide any new funds to support Ukraine.
- Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for no further requests from the German Defense Ministry for military aid to Ukraine to be approved.
- At the same time, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated that these reports were false and manipulative.
- Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksii Makeiev warned that the costs for Germany would be much higher if Ukraine lost the war against Russia.
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