German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said that in the long term the country will not be able to support Ukraine’s defense capabilities alone – other countries should also increase bilateral assistance to Kyiv/
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A statement by the minister in the German government coalition from the Free Democratic Party of Germany Lindner is quoted by Reuters.
It cannot be that Germany is doing more to help Ukraine so that others can do less,” the minister said at an event of the German Association of Eastern Businesses.
Germany has actually increased military supplies to Ukraine in recent months, which has become noticeable against the background of the depletion of the US budget for these purposes. According to the Kiel Institute of World Economics for December (in France, the accuracy of this data is questioned), Germany ranks second after the United States in both the total volume of aid to Ukraine and the volume of military assistance.
Recall that amid problems in the United States with providing further military assistance to Ukraine, EU officials intend to consider a new plan that would allow Kyiv to provide tens of billions of dollars in military assistance over the next years, despite internal divisions in the bloc.
20 billion euros are to be paid from the EU fund to member states for providing “tens of billions of euros” of military aid to Ukraine over the next four years.
This plan has been discussed within the EU for several weeks and was presented on January 19.
For the first time, the EU began using funds from the European Peace Fund (EPF) to finance lethal weapons for Kyiv.
During the year, 5.5 billion euros were compensated to EU countries that supplied weapons to Ukraine, mainly from their stockpiles of ammunition, tanks and air defense missiles. However, for six months now, the Hungarian government has been blocking payments under the long-term military assistance program to Ukraine.
The EU foreign policy service proposes to create a special military fund for Ukraine, which will receive about 6.5 billion euros from EMF assets and will contribute up to 5 billion euros per year in the period from 2024 to 2027.
Some of the money will go towards paying rising costs for the EU’s military training program for Ukrainian soldiers, which has already trained 40,000 troops.
There will be a transition period until the new plan comes into force. According to rough estimates, this year the EU may offer member countries compensation for military assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 7.5 billion euros.
The advantage of this plan is that it will allow EU countries with small quantities of ammunition to pool resources in joint purchases.
In addition, the structure of the fund will avoid regular payments, which Hungary has repeatedly “blocked or used as leverage to demand something instead.”
At the same time, bilateral assistance provided by Germany and a number of other countries to Ukraine can be credited towards their contributions to this fund.
A new plan to provide military aid to Ukraine will be discussed at the EU summit on February 1, but a final decision on it is likely to take weeks.
Source: Racurs
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