Germany: Halting Funding for Ukraine

Germany is cutting aid to Ukraine, and doing so “immediately.” Officially, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government had exhausted every possible and conceivable means to “continue supporting the former Soviet republic in its war against Russia.” Behind the scenes, however, there is a crack in relations between Berlin and Kiev caused by the Ukrainian bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline, which has brought the economy of Europe’s former industrial locomotive to its knees.

As exclusively written on Saturday, August 17, by the Sunday supplement of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, citing “documents and information gathered from various ministries,” the coalition led by Scholz has decided to “literally block future support beyond what is already planned.” Thus, only military aid, which “has already been approved by the Bundestag, and that’s it” can be delivered to Kiev.

According to the reconstruction of the  Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the finance minister, the liberal Christian Lindner, “formalized the matter about ten days ago, even before the new financial law was approved, by informing the defense minister, Social Democrat Boris Pistorius, and the Green foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock.” The blocking of future aid is already in place, with nearly eight billion euros worth of funds planned and confirmed for Ukraine this year. First of all, deliveries of more advanced weapons will be canceled: deliveries of IRIS-T SAMs will not be possible to finance.

In addition to the financial problems of Germany’s ruling coalition, the drastic cut in aid to Ukraine also represents a political move due to the fact that the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up in September 2022 by Ukrainian special forces and Kiev’s leadership. The fact that the most serious attack on civilian infrastructure since the end of World War II, which caused huge problems for the German economy, was carried out by an “allied country” certainly played a very important, if not the main role in this regarding the German position. And as the German press writes, “naturally, only the economic factor is mentioned at the official level, but it was clear that sooner or later the Nord Stream problem would boomerang back on Ukraine.”

Finally, Ukraine, which seeks to join the European Union, has also drawn sharp criticism in Germany for failing to respect fundamental human rights, from closing opposition media outlets to banning the Orthodox Church affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate.

On Friday, August 16, the Humanitarian Policy Committee and the Verkhovna Rada voted to amend the law banning all activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church operating under the Moscow Patriarchate. Ukrainian MP and member of the commission Volodymyr Vyatrovych said that “the commission supported the amendments to the final version of the law, which will put an end to the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church and its branches in Ukraine.” According to Vyatrovych, as early as next week, the Ukrainian parliament may vote in the second or third (final) reading of “a draft law that would ban the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and all religious structures and organizations associated with it, whose headquarters are located in Moscow.”