A remonstrance implicitly addressed to Olaf Scholz. The social democratic chancellor, whose military support for Ukraine has been up and down since the Russian offensive of February 2022, has been blocking an additional envelope for kyiv for several days.
The discussion concerns 3 billion euros, planned in principle for this year, but financing for which is proving difficult to find.
“Who will pay the bill?” asked the Chancellor. He explained that he did not want to further burden the 2025 budget without knowing “at whose expense we will have to save”, saying he feared for the finances of municipalities or pensions.
First conducted behind the scenes, the debate transformed into open conflict with his head of diplomacy, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock. And, in a more subdued way, with his Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius, even though he is a member of his social-democratic party.
– Upheavals –
This controversy crowns three years during which Ukraine shook up the situation in Germany, notably pushing the country to end its energy alliance with Moscow and to initiate rearmament.
“There is a lot of German support, without it Ukraine would have no chance,” Alla Dudka, a 57-year-old Ukrainian who lives in Ingelheim-on-the-Rhine, in the west, told AFP. of the country.
She says she has felt this support “every day” since her arrival, when neighbors “brought her clothes, cutlery, pots, everything”.
But she worries about the growing rhetoric against migrants and refugees in Germany, which would cost too much for a country that has entered an economic recession.
Because the German far right advocates the return, or even the expulsion, of refugees from Ukraine. Beyond that, support for Ukrainians through social assistance and arms deliveries are causing growing unease.
– Opportunism? –
Olaf Scholz is accused by his rivals of acting out of electoral opportunism by blocking the new package of military support for Ukraine.
-He thus marks his difference with the conservative opposition, at the top of the polls, and the environmentalists, who are much more forthcoming on military aid.
Annalena Baerbock leads the offensive against her chancellor, denouncing those who seek “to quickly win votes rather than assuming their responsibility to truly guarantee peace and freedom in Europe”.
For the leader of the liberal FDP party, Christian Lindner, whose departure in November caused the breakup of the government coalition and precipitated the legislative elections, Olaf Scholz, in bad shape in the polls, “behaves like a person panicking for fear of drowning.
“We have to stop playing pensioners against Ukrainians,” he said on his X account.
On the right, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), with a pro-Russian program and ranked second with more than 20% in opinion polls, is in the lead.
It is followed on this ground by the radical left. “The endless arms deliveries have not improved Ukraine’s situation,” said BSW leader Sahra Wagenknecht, for whom “we must not prolong the agony.”
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