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The German government has come under attack from politicians across the political spectrum after it emerged that finance minister Christian Lindner has written to colleagues to veto new military aid for Ukraine.
In a letter sent to the ministry of defence and foreign office on August 5, Lindner said that new applications for military support would be rejected by his ministry unless additional funds could be found — pointing to frozen Russian assets in Europe as one potential source.
Existing aid programmes, which have already been funded, would remain in place, he said.
The contents of the letter were first reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on Sunday, which said Chancellor Olaf Scholz had asked his finance minister to issue the instruction.
Germany’s fractious coalition government has been bickering for months over its budget, with Lindner, the head of the fiscally conservative Free Democrats, insisting that strict rules on borrowing are adhered to.
Germany is Ukraine’s largest military donor after the US.
This year it will deliver about €7.5bn of military aid to Kyiv. Budget pressures mean that figure is already set to fall: the government’s draft 2025 spending plans allocate €4bn.
The German government said on Monday that claims of aid was being immediately cut were inaccurate and that discussions around financing were still ongoing.
Scholz has meanwhile been under mounting pressure to appease pacifists within his own Social Democratic party (SPD) who are critical of further German entanglement in Ukraine.
In regional elections next month the SPD is expected to lose ground to the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, an insurgent leftwing party with strong pro-Russian views that is popular among lower-income voters.
Shares in German defence companies fell on news of Linder’s letter, with Rheinmetall, the country’s largest arms maker, down more than 5 per cent at one point during the morning, and Hensoldt, maker of radars for the Iris-T air defence system down as much as 7.6 per cent.
The chair of the Bundestag foreign relations committee, Michael Roth, a Social Democrat, said the decision was a “fatal signal”.
“The Ukrainian army is back on the offensive for the first time in months. The country now needs the full support of its most important military ally in Europe: Germany,” Roth said on Monday.
“Instead, the debate about the future financing of military aid looks like a disguised withdrawal of Germany from responsibility. We cannot make our security dependent on budget constraints.”
The chair of the Germany-Ukraine parliamentary group, Greens party politician Robin Wagener, said: “One has the impression that it is about sacrificing peace and freedom, but remaining debt-free.”
Prominent politicians from Germany’s opposition Christian Democrats also lined up to criticise the move.
Roderich Kiesewetter, a former colonel and current member of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said the restrictions “de facto mean Ukraine will be abandoned”.
“This is not how any self-declared leading nation of Europe acts,” he told Der Tagesspiegel.