Aid to Ukraine has established itself as a major subject of the campaign for the German legislative elections on February 23, tearing the parties, including what remains of the government coalition of Olaf Scholz.
Tuesday, since the Davos forum, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky himself was moved, while he is already dreading the American support melt with Donald Trump.
“We must not play with people’s emotions and say that the defense” of Ukraine “is done at the expense of medicine or pensions or I don’t know what,” he said.
An admonition addressed implicitly to Olaf Scholz. The Social Democratic Chancellor, whose military support for Ukraine has been in a sawfall since the Russian offensive in February 2022, has been blocking an additional envelope for kyiv for several days.
The discussion relates to 3 billion euros, planned in principle for this year, but whose funding is complicated to find.
“Who will pay the bill?” Asked the chancellor. He explained that he did not want to grew the 2025 budget more without knowing “at the expense of whom it will be necessary to save”, saying to fear for the finances of the municipalities or the pensions.
First led behind the scenes, the debate turned into an open conflict with his head of diplomacy, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock. And, more and more, with his Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius, yet a member of his social democratic party.
Upheaval
This controversy crosses three years during which Ukraine has turned the situation in Germany upset, pushing the country in particular to end its energy alliance with Moscow and to initiate a rearmament.
| © AFP/Archives The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (G) and the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (de), during a meeting in kyiv, on January 14, 2025 in Ukraine |
Berlin has paid kyiv so far nearly 40 billion euros, the second largest amount after the United States and welcomed 1.2 million of its citizens as refugees. This policy has long made consensus in opinion.
“There is a lot of German support, without him Ukraine would have no chance,” AFP Alla Dudka told AFP, a 57-year-old Ukrainian, who lives in Ingelheim-sur-le-Rhin, in the west of the country.
She says she feels this support “every day” since her arrival, when neighbors “brought her clothes, cutlery, pots, everything”.
But she is concerned about the growing discourse against migrants and refugees in Germany, which would cost too much to a country entered into economic recession.
| © AFP The Ukrainian Alla Dudka, January 22, 2025 in Mainz, Germany - |
“We have suffered so many misfortunes (…), it’s really hard to hear that we no longer have the right to stay here,” she says.
Because the German extreme right advocates the return, even the expulsion, of the refugees of Ukraine. Beyond that, support via social assistance to the Ukrainians, and delivery of weapons arouse increasing discomfort.
Opportunism?
Olaf Scholz is accused by his rivals of acting by electoral opportunism by blocking the new military support envelope in Ukraine.
| | © AFP Electoral posters of the German Chancellor Olaf Schoz (D) and the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, January 21, 2025 in Dortmund |
With the online farm elections, the social democrat seeks to present itself now as a “chancellor of peace” in the conflict, supporter of prudence, anxious to avoid a military climbing with Russia.
He thus marks his difference with the conservative opposition, at the top of the surveys, and environmentalists, much more alternative to military aid.
Annalena Baerbock leads the offensive against her chancellor, denouncing those who seek “to quickly win votes rather than assuming their responsibility to really guarantee peace and freedom in Europe”.
For the leader of the Liberal FDP party, Christian Lindner, whose departure in November caused the break -up of the government coalition and precipitated the legislative elections, Olaf Scholz, in bad shape in the polls, “behaves like a panicked person fear of drowning “.
“You have to stop playing retirees against Ukrainians,” he said on his X account.
| | © Pool/AFP Alice Weidel, co-leader of the German far-right party AFD, in her office on January 9, 2025 in Berlin |
On the extreme side, the opposition to help from Ukraine is more and more resolved.
On the right, the alternative for Germany (AFD), on the pro-Russian program and given in second position to more than 20% in opinion surveys, is at the forefront.
It is followed on this ground by the radical left. “Endless deliveries of arms have not improved the situation of Ukraine,” said the leader of the BSW, Sahra Wagenknecht, for whom “we must not prolong agony”.
