Germany is planning to cut its spending on military aid for Ukraine in half next year and is telling Kyiv to look elsewhere for more funding.
According to Germany’s draft budget for 2025, Berlin will bring its spending on Ukraine to 4 billion euros ($4.35 billion), down from 8 billion euros ($8.7 billion).
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was initially reluctant to arm Ukraine and initially resisted sending heavy weapons such as tanks, citing the risk of World War III. But he eventually agreed, and Germany has become the top supplier of weapons to Ukraine in Europe.
The draft budget still needs to be finalized and could face some resistance in parliament. However, Scholz’s government officials appear set on making the cuts to cover other spending. Another issue is that Germany’s military has depleted much of its stockpiles by arming Ukraine.
According to POLITICO, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said after the cabinet meeting that approved the draft budget that Ukraine would have to rely more on funds from other “European sources,” including a $50 billion that may be provided using frozen Russian assets.
Group of Seven leaders agreed to give Ukraine a loan of $50 billion that would be paid back with profits made from Russia’s frozen Central Bank assets, but the plan hasn’t yet been finalized. The step will mark a significant escalation of the economic campaign against Moscow.
Why should Germany pay when they can get the suckers in Washington DC to pay for the Ukraine War?
Or why should they pay at all …?
Exactly. Germany would be far, far better off in economic partnership with Russia than they are as dependent, servile, stooges to the USA.
Yes, why pay when you have no threat? Foodoo's right, everything European was trending toward Moscow and constituting a threat to Neocon unipolar dollar hegemony.
"Neocon unipolar dollar hegemony"
Certainly, the Neocons depend on unipolar dollar hegemony.
But Yankee Imperial project extends beyond Neocon realm.
All of it depends on the Yankee dollar.
For the UK that is a big no no, the red line for the UK.
Well, because Ukraine is in their neighborhood/backyard.
Not really. Russia has no designs beyond the Ukraine, even if they intend to take all of it (which is not clear). Germany has no border with the Ukraine, and is separated from it by the entirety of Poland in the north. The entirety of Czechia and Slovakia in the center, and the entirety of Hungary and Austria in the south. Germany and the Ukraine, at their closest points, are six hundred kilometers or more apart.
Never said Russia has territorial designs in Europe today ,(although historically they certainly have) just pointed out that Russia and Ukraine are in Germany’s neighborhood .
Germany has no compelling reason to care. The Ukraine is NOT in its “neighborhood,” and Russia even less so. The Ukraine has been in Russia’s sphere of influence for centuries. It’s only a ginned up, NATO has no eastern limit, neo imperialist mentality that makes the composition of the government of the Ukraine a matter of interest for states like Germany, Italy, France, the UK, and the USA.
Europeans wanted a neutral Ukraine. Only the UK and US wanted a Ukraine they could control and they could station nuclear weapons on the Russian border.
Russia's natural resources are there for the taking, that is not against the law, or is it?
"Russia's natural resources are there for the taking, that is not against the law, or is it?"
Whoses law?
The UK always blocked good relations between Germany and Russia for centuries. The Kaiser and the Czar were cousins and liked each other, Pols hated Russians and the UK hated Germany, so they formed an alliance encircling Germany, like NATO now does against Russia and spreading in the Pacific against China.
Pretty crazy, but demented people are crazy. But they do understand war is profitable.
British foreign policy in Europe was always about maintaining a “balance of power” among the European nations so that neither France, nor Germany nor Russia would gain hegemony on the continent. It was not about hating Germans in the last century, but rather the simple recognition that the Germans represented the greatest threat to British power.
True, and war preparations include the manipulation of the public mind by creating enemies and hate. The people don’t want war, the ruling elite does, it is big business for them and destruction and blood and tears and ruins for the people.
It has nothing to do with balance of power, it is all about Anglo-Saxon hegemony on the continent. Europeans invaded Russia, not the other way around. Napoleon and his army crossed the continent from the Atlantic all the way to Moscow, where he was beaten, on Russian territory not on French territory near Paris.
History is important it is the context of the present. Europe has a history, the USA has three centuries of history compared to thousands of years of Chinese history.
Biden attempted a regime change of a popular president of a nuclear superpower in Moscow and the breakup of the RF.
Looks like Biden made a big mess and has to go.
Why did he think he could do what Trump could not do in Venezuela? I get it, he is demented and that goes for his advisers too.
"Or why should they pay at all …?"
Indeed. Which raises the question: Why should the US taxpayers be paying for this damnable war?
Do you think Germany is that smart? You're talking about a country that paid for the Nord Stream Pipeline II only to pay the terrible economic price of blowing it up before it even delivered gas.
“Terrorists” blew up Nordstream.
Yes; the terrorist agency known as the CIA; quite possibly the most evil collection of sociopaths in the world, alongside their sisters Mossad and MI6.
Government employed state terrorists did it, the same people who assassinate people in helicopter crashes and organize bloody regime changes.
Did you say “assassinate” people?
Of course, it happens all the time.
Like at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania?
That was a pretty botched attempt and only scratched Trumps ear, Dallas was really professional, that includes even the hearings. We still don’t know who did it. And JFK was a real and a potential great president.
Wouldn’t have been a “botched attempt” if Trump hadn’t miraculously turned his head to the side at exactly the right moment.
So what? It it is a botched attempt.
If you really believe Donald Trump is a White Supremacist “Hitler” why would you have any qualms about rigging an election or assassinating him in order to “save democracy”?
Trump is a convicted felon and rapist who belongs in prison.
That does not change the facts, they are what they are. How do you know what I believe? Where did I say I believe ” Donald Trump is a White Supremacist “Hitler”???
BTW, what democracy are you talking about? The US IS DOING REGIME CHANGES all the time. They put brutal RW dictators in power as long as they serve American interests. European elections are as rigged as US elections are.
FQ off MAGAT!
'"Terrorists" blew up Nordstream.'
Define "Terrorists".
You’ll notice that I put ” ” around terrorists.
Why do you think Europe wants more Biden and HATES Trump? Self-interest.
Interesting old article before Biden came into office and the war got started. Germany’s prior leader was not having it and ignored sanctions.
Antony Blinken’s Book
The year: 1987. The president: Ronald Reagan. The dilemma: What to do about the new gas pipeline that Europe was building to Russia, one of America’s key foreign policy rivals. Blinken’s first book, Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe, and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis, was published by a then-unknown young writer in 1987. But the dilemma it explores bears remarkable similarities to the challenges the Biden administration is about to face when it takes office. In fact, looking at Blinken’s analysis of U.S. foreign policy during the 1980s provides some tantalizing clues as to how he plans to guide American diplomacy if he is confirmed as Biden’s secretary of state.The “Siberian pipeline crisis” that formed the subject of Ally Versus Ally has been forgotten by all but specialists. During the mid-1980s, though, it was a source of angry debate in U.S.-European relations. Under the Reagan administration, the United States was tightening the screws on the Soviet Union—applying diplomatic pressure and cutting off commerce. Washington’s campaign was unpopular in Western Europe, where the consensus opinion was that the Soviets needed to be engaged, not defeated. Europeans saw Moscow and its Warsaw Pact satellites as valuable trading partners and wanted to import natural gas from the vast Siberian gas fields that Russia was just then beginning to develop.
To Europe, tapping those seemed like an obvious way for it to diversify its energy supplies. To Washington, the pipeline was a scheme that would end up funding the Soviet military machine. When Europe started laying pipe against U.S objections, Washington then sanctioned European companies involved. European governments pushed ahead anyway. A foreign-policy disagreement was becoming a commercial crisis. And the alliance that had held the West together since World War II risked fracturing. It was “the beginning of the end of the Atlantic Alliance,” France’s foreign minister declared.
When French President Emmanuel Macron declared NATO “brain dead” last year, he was far from the first French leader to call the Western alliance into question. Today’s transatlantic divisions have to the crisis of the late 1980s. Now, Germany is building a new gas pipeline from Russia—Nord Stream 2. Washington has again levied sanctions on companies involved, causing German politicians to accuse the United States of “neo-imperialism,” “blackmail,” and even “economic war.”
Then as now, the nuclear order in Europe was also in crisis, with the United States and Russia threatening to build up force levels in Europe. Such threats of escalation, too, intensified divisions between Washington and its European allies, many of which were skeptical of the utility of adding nukes on their territory. And just like today, the West feared that the center of gravity in international politics was shifting toward Asia; it was the period of “Japan as Number One,” as one influential book put it. This, too, seemed to bode poorly for the Atlantic Alliance.
In Ally Versus Ally, Blinken evinced little sympathy for the Reagan administration’s campaign of maximum pressure against the Soviet Union, though he also thought the Europeans’ hope that “expanded economic relations will produce positive change in the Kremlin’s foreign and domestic policies” was “wishful thinking.” However, he argued, U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union was less important than U.S. policy toward its European allies. The key geopolitical prize was not changes in Soviet behavior—which were difficult to predict or to shape—but alliance unity.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/03/blinken-secretary-state-alliances-nato-ally-versus-ally/
The US put Scholz in office, he is a traitor as well as the members of the coalition. The US hegemon meddles in allies elections making sure their man/woman gets elected. Merkel was a more discrete Atlanticist.
We can argue about how smart Germany is(whatever that means), but when you are being manipulated by a globe spanning hegemon, even intelligence is of limited utility.
It’s like if someone is not gay getting F****d in the A** but still required to show that they’re enjoying it. I mean the Germans seem to really enjoy it, if you know what I mean.
"I mean the Germans seem to really enjoy it, if you know what I mean."
Yes, I think I get the point.
I think the Germans are reading the tea leaves that the Ukraine project is not long for this world come next year … cut losses early, I'd say.
Germany, unlike U.S. does not have the printing press. Not to mention they’ve been riding the gravy train since WW2 for their security.
What is this "gravy train"? Do you honestly think that the USA wants Germany to become more militaristic; to start making its own weapons and more importantly its own decisions? USA just wants other nations to pay for US weapons; to pick up the tab while USA retains hegemony. Did the "gravy train" ticket include the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline?
I contend that the true worry of of the USA was not the Russian military but the pipeline; the threat of normalized relations and decisions between Europe and Russia which would leave US (and UK) out of the loop.
That is true, it goes way back before WWI and the Bismarck Germany. Germany in little pieces is good but not a whole Germany, it is the same reasoning as a broken up Russia and China, divide and conquer is still the Anglo-Saxon motto.
A militarized Germany will be much more useful and effective against a hypothetical Russian invasion than acting as U.S. patsy.
That's only a little bit true. After WW2, the allies were determined that Germany would never be "a threat" to anyone ever again, and put in harsh demilitarization laws, forbidding the Germans to rearm. German militarism was condemned in schools, Germans were forced to apologize, over and over again, for what their predecessors did, and had to permit (and in many cases pay for) foreign occupation of their territory.
OK Fine; that's what happens when you lose a war. And, unlike after Versailles, the Germans accepted it.
Then, when the allies fell out, the west decided that, rather than pay to raise their own military forces, why not use Germans as cannon fodder against the Soviets? So Germany was "allowed" (read, "ordered") to rebuild its army, but with all sorts of "controls" put in, that basically made them dependent slaves of NATO (read US) policy and command. "You can die for NATO, but you'll only act when we say you can, against who we tell you to, where we tell you to, and you can only rearm the way we allow".
Again, OK fine. The Germans did as they were told.
Finally, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Germany was allowed to reunify, but again under strict requirements to disarm and reduce the size of their military – a military they only built up because NATO (read "the US") made them. Again, the Germans complied.
NOW, we are all butt hurt that Germany doesn't want to rearm yet AGAIN, just because we told them to. If I was a German, my attitude would be F to that, F to NATO, and in particular, F the USA. And good for them, they seem to be doing that.
NATO is the disguise for American hegemon interests, it was always meant to be the battlefield between Communist Russia and Capitalist USA. Germany paid for American troops stationed in Germany. NATO has been used to serve American interests only. Even now the USA is an insidious occupier.
That is a part of history which still remains to be written. As we all know the victor writes the history.
Bottom-line the Anglo-Saxons have caused more harm to the continent than is really known.
The current lying and control of public information and war propaganda is an eye opener. Who said nations have no friends, he is proven right.
The influence the UK has over US "elites" is completely baffling. Having ruined their own empire, and largely their own country, reducing it to a bare shadow of what it used to be, then quitting the EU like a spoiled mean girl because Germany, France, and Italy would no longer pay them the deference they believe is their due, they have latched on to US elites like a sort of mind parasite, trying to get us to do to ourselves what they did to themselves. And the leadership of the mainstream democratic and republican parties seems hell bent on doing their bidding. God knows why.
Cracks me up that the Brits despise Trump; if he had no other endorsement or merit, that opposition alone would seal the deal for me and turn me into a trumpist. F the UK.
Old privilege is not about to let go, they will accept playing second fiddle, better than nothing. Trump is not one them, by their standards he is new money , not blue blooded old nobility.
"Germans are reading the tea leaves that the Ukraine project is not long for this world … cut losses early"
Plus last I checked – a while back – the Scholz govt. was increasingly antidemocratically acting against the negotiated settlement most German citizens want. Hence:
1/ On the matter of spending priorities – "making the cuts to cover other spending" – this: "German farmers, protesting cuts to agricultural subsidies, were honking their horns and driving tractors through the streets." (NYRB, Jan 2024)
2/ And on deadly war spending vs negotiated settlement, this:
(12/22) "Poll: Large Majority of Germans Want Negotiations Between Ukraine and Russia Now
The wish for peace talks prevails among voters of every political party represented in the Bundestag"
and support keeps falling…
2/23 "German public support for Ukraine is falling" … "a Forsa Poll revealed that over 80% believe that it is more important to end the war with negotiations than for Ukraine to win, with only 18% disagreeing with that statement."
(Note other big, ongoing shifts in above piece.)
Scholz takes his orders from Washington, the people who put him in office. His coalition sold the nation. They are traitors.
"telling Kyiv to look elsewhere for more funding"
Ukrainian project was conceived in U.S., Zelensky himself belongs to Israel. It would be fair if Netanyahu and Biden take care of Zelensky and his team.
In politics nothing is fair, the allies are backstabbers. Remember the French and Australian 2016 submarine deal which insidious AUKUS after 18 month of secret negotiations blew up in the face of the French, the sabotage of the NS2 pipeline, and the sanctions imposed on NATO/EU members.
The Anglo-Saxon alliances are forced and extorted or corrupt alliances by name only. They will jump ship the first chance they get.
Neoliberals and their money are soon parted.
Scholz math maybe better than mine. The EU will be paying the difference with money they get from Germany.
"EU will be paying the difference with money they get from Germany."
link?
Military Summary channel update from this morning
Germany was the paymaster in Europe, now the economy has been destroyed, there is no cow left to milk, Biden and neocons made sure. The same is true of NATO.
Germany is in deep sh*t…! They deserve it…!
Who gives them permission to that? Demented Joe or Tel Aviv?
The US and Israel will also demand the Europeans pay for the Gaza cleanup so the Americans can loot and invest in Gaza. With nothing but rubble there is nothing to loot. They also need to rebuild the infrastructure first. Who is to pay for all that?
Good luck with those plans. Its been over 20 years, and uncounted billions, and Afghanistan and Iraq are still largely in ruins. Germany has its hands full keeping the weak complaining sisters in the EU above water; don't see where any money for Gaza will come from. The UK will, as usual, default and plead poverty.
Crazy people will say and do anything as long as it helps to win elections, after the election the deluge, who cares what comes after that?
This is interesting since I’ve recently read that because of their war/military budget, they are cutting domestically.
The costs for all the refugees are huge too, maybe Joe will send a ship to Germany to bring some to the USA, lots of Ukrainians are in Germany, including military age young men. As of now, only the USA is profiting from the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. They sell and fund credits to pay for the American MIC made weapon supply.
Scholz is really the German Zelensky. He sold the nation like Zelensky sold Ukraine.
Germany is still occupied but no Chancellor took orders without some pushback. I am convinced American interests made him chancellor.