BERLIN — With severe clashes over the budget and increasing evidence that Ukraine was behind the blowing up of natural gas pipelines between Russia and Germany, the German government has come under increasing pressure at home to roll back its support for Ukraine and push harder for negotiations to try to end its war with Russia.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been quick to try to allay fears that Berlin will diminish its aid. Speaking on Wednesday in Moldova, he insisted that “Germany will not let up in its support for Ukraine” for “as long as necessary,” and would remain, he said, “Ukraine’s biggest national supporter in Europe.”
But his three-party coalition government is increasingly unpopular and facing critical state elections in September, where parties on both the far left and far right, which have called for an end to military assistance to Kyiv, are expected to do well.
The primary burden on the government, which can seem paralyzed in making major financial decisions, is the constitutional requirement to keep new budget debt to no more than 0.35 percent of GDP.
But the government also faces a potential embarrassment if the prosecutor general charges any Ukrainian officials with responsibility for blowing up three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in 2022.
The government has unsuccessfully sought the arrest of a Ukrainian diver who had been living in Poland, prompting suggestions that the Polish government, which strongly opposed Germany’s decision to build the pipelines, might also have aided the effort to destroy them. The suspicions have already increased tensions with Poland, with whom Germany has a difficult relationship, and raised questions about Germany’s unconditional support for Ukraine.
German criticism of “insufficient investigative assistance” from Polish authorities was met with blunt words from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who took to X to suggest in English that the “initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2 should apologise and keep quiet.”
But Germany’s tensions with Ukraine are more concretely about the 2025 budget. Finance Minister Christian Lindner wants to avoid raising taxes and to cut the budget, which must be close to balanced by law.
That constraint has put pressure not only on the government’s aid to Ukraine, but also on Mr. Scholz’s pledge made just after the start of the war two and a half years ago for Germany to make a dramatic strategic pivot and step up its military spending.
Since then, Germany’s increased military spending has been met largely by a special 100 billion euro special fund, outside the regular budget, expected to dry up by 2027. Mr. Lindner has insisted that the government no longer take loans outside the budget for special projects, like increased military spending.
Only last Friday the coalition agreed to narrow its 2025 budget deficit target from 17 billion euros ($18.9 billion) down to €12 billion, after original proposals fell apart.
As part of that deal, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported, Mr. Lindner suggested in a letter that the government would freeze new military aid to Ukraine until full budget resources were funded.
Already last month, the government decided to cut 2025 funding to Ukraine from €7.5 billion to €4 billion, arguing that the shortfall would come from anticipated income from frozen Russian assets held in Europe under a plan agreed upon by the Group of 7 nations at their June summit meeting in Italy.
There, the G7 agreed to provide a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, using the frozen Russian assets as collateral. Together with funds provided by individual nations, Mr. Scholz said, “this will be more than what has been available to Ukraine in terms of support to date.”
Germany is Europe’s largest supporter of Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion, providing over €14 billion in support — mostly military — between the invasion in February 2022 and the end of June 2024, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Asked about Ukraine’s decision to invade Russia in the Kursk region, Mr. Scholz said that he did not know about it in advance and suggested that “this is a very limited operation in terms of space and probably also in terms of time.”
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