Why Germany is halving its military aid to Ukraine

Will Germany abandon Ukraine? While the Ukrainian army is currently trying to consolidate its positions on Russian territory, Berlin has announced that it will halve its military spending in favor of kyiv.

“The party is over”a government source summed up on Sunday, August 18, confirming the information that appeared in the press a little earlier. This year, Germany has allocated 8 billion euros in credits for Ukraine. In its 2025 budget, it will be four billion, in 2026, three billion, and in 2027, the goal is not to exceed 500,000 million euros.

Even if four billion is to return to the amount for the year 2023 (after an exceptional year 2024 which saw a doubling of aid),The fall is brutal. And it is useless to hope to negotiate exceptional envelopes. In July, after the bombing of the children’s hospital in kyiv, the German Minister of Defense wanted to provide Kiev with an additional anti-aircraft defense system. He had already been entitled to a “no” resounding. After several years of slippage, Berlin wants to return to the famous “debt brake”, this rule enshrined in the Constitution which limits the use of public debt. Which is not without creating strong tensions between the three coalition partners.

In recent months, budgetary arbitrations have been very difficult, with environmentalists refusing, for example, to validate cuts to social spending or the ecological transition, in order to preserve their political capital before several important regional elections in September. At the Ministry of Defense, the social democrat Boris Pistorius, an ardent supporter of military support for Ukraine (and incidentally the Germans’ favorite political figure) is also coming up against the liberal Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, who is holding the purse strings tightly.

This German reduction in military aid to Ukraine will have a significant impact: according to the Kiel Institute ranking, which remains a reference, Germany is Ukraine’s second largest supplier of arms, behind the United States (and far ahead of France). Between the start of the war in February 2022 and June 30, 2024, its contribution amounts to more than 14 billion euros in direct aid. Berlin has notably provided 76 Leopard tanks, three Patriot anti-aircraft systems and 24 Iris-T short- or medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems.

Berlin, which wants to hand over the reins, is eyeing the interest generated by the $300 billion of Russian assets frozen in European banks. In June, several G7 countries agreed to use them. But now the technical details of implementation need to be discussed, which could take several more months.

The German retreat fuels all the more concerns that American aid also risks being called into question in the event of Donald Trump’s election. Very annoyed, the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin recalls that it is “the security of Europe“whole who”depends (today) on the political will of Germany“In Berlin, criticism is raining down on these drastic cuts, which are considered to be ““unwise”.

The best lawyer for Ukrainians on Monday morning is Russian, his name is Gary Kasparov. This opponent of Vladimir Putin, now exiled in the United States, has a full page in the daily newspaper Image. In the photo of a woman in a combatant’s cemetery filled with yellow and blue flags, we can read this sentence: “Formerly, Germany has brought the world to the brink. Chancellor Scholz, do not let this happen again. Give Ukraine the military aid it needs“. The budget compromise will be examined in Parliament at the start of the school year, adjustments are still possible, the debates promise to be heated.