‘Pot Is Empty’ — Germany to End New Ukraine Military Aid Amid Berlin’s Budget Crunch: Report

BERLIN, GERMANY - MAY 14: (L-R) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky looks on as German
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Germany has halted future aid to Ukraine amid Berlin’s budget struggles, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reports.

According to the FAZ report, all future requests from the Ministry of Defence for Ukraine aid will not be approved by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as his leftist government seeks to cut costs to address the 12 billion euro budget shortfall.

The paper said, however, that most of the money and physical aid already allocated to be sent to Ukraine will continue to be sent. This year, some 8 billion euros have been earmarked for Kyiv, while next year an additional 4 billion has already been approved after aid was slashed in half for budgetary reasons.

Past that, a government source told FAZ that “the pot is empty.” Government communications obtained by the paper said that “new measures” will only be approved if fresh “financing is secured” for upcoming federal budgets.

With Germany representing Ukraine’s largest single financier in Europe, the cessation of further aid payments could represent a significant hurdle for Kyiv to continue the war against the much larger and richer Russia.

Although the payment freeze is technically for future budgets, the effects of the cutoff are already having an impact on present-day aid transfers, with money for an IRIS-T air defence system offered by German manufacturer Diehl Defence recently being denied by the federal government.

This is because the €8 billion allocated for this year has already been spent, and the € 4 billion slated for 2025 has reportedly been surpassed. According to the report, while Ukraine will receive supplies previously agreed upon, “hardly any” new orders from Germany will be possible until 2028.

Berlin is reportedly banking on future aid to Ukraine coming from the $300 billion pot of Russian central bank assets seized by Western allies in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion.

While the G-7 nations agreed at their Italian summit in June to use the interest on the assets to help finance a $50 billion loan for Kyiv, there has been no formal agreement on whether the assets themselves or the income generated from interest could be sent directly to Ukraine to prop up the war effort.

Indeed, the Green Party’s chairman in the Bundestag parliament’s budget committee said that currently “there is unfortunately nothing concrete on the use of Russian assets.” The deputy budget spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Andreas Schwarz, added that it is unknown how soon Russian assets could be diverted to Ukraine or “whether this is legally possible at all.”

The spending freeze will likely further exacerbate ongoing issues with the lack of support from Germany. FAZ reported that due to a lack of spare parts and ammunition, some German guns already supplied to Ukraine can only fire three to four rounds per day, undercutting the usefulness of fast-firing guns such as the Panzerhaubitze 2000.

The paper also reports that many working German Leopard 1A5 main battle tanks are being “cannibalised” by the Ukrainians in order to keep others going due to a lack of spare parts supplied by Berlin.

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