Berlin’s 2025 budget, seen by the Reuters news agency, provides for military aid to Ukraine to be slashed from the current €8 billion to just €4 billion.
Germany’s finance minister told a Wednesday press conference he hoped a G7 loan of $50 billion from frozen Russian assets would cover Kyiv’s defense spending requirements going forward.
“Ukraine’s financing is secured for the foreseeable future thanks to European instruments and the G7 loans,” Christian Lindner was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The G7 financing was pushed by Washington in order to “front load” Kyiv’s financing due to the possibility of Trump returning to the Oval Office, Reuters reported. Trump’s chances of regaining the presidency have been bolstered by the incumbent Joe Biden’s
unconvincing performance in the pair’s first televised debate in June.
Trump’s popularity has also surged as a result of an assassination attempt on July 13. To raise the stakes, European policy-makers were dismayed by Trump’s announcement of his chosen running mate for the November election. Senator J.D. Vance is a vocal opponent of military aid for Ukraine and has warned Europe it will have to rely less on the United States for protection.
Despite the grim predictions, however, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has said he is in close contact with Trump’s team and that “one of the ideas is to increase assistance to Ukraine and that is an idea that we like and that we support.”
Shifting priorities
To date, Germany has provided Ukraine with three Patriot air defense systems, reducing its own stocks to nine. Now Germany is focusing on its own defense needs and will comply in 2025 with NATO’s guideline of spending 2% of GDP on defense earmarking €75.3 billion for the purpose.
Lindner also said Berlin could not provide the same level of humanitarian aid globally as it has in the past. The finance minister said Germany had to invest more in its own “hard security,” as a result of which the “balance is shifting a bit.”
“And in reverse, we can’t continue to be involved everywhere in the world as we have been up to now, because even Germany's potential as the fourth-largest economy in the world will be limited at some point,” he said.
