Germany is going to allocate 5bn euros annually for military support to Ukraine until 2027, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said during a visit to Kyiv.
“Now we are talking to Ukraine not as a donor country, but as a partner country”, Lindner said at a press conference with the head of the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, Serhii Marchenko (quoted by Forbes.ua).
Lindner specified that the decision on the annual allocation of 5 billion euros still has to be approved by the German parliament. Overall, since the beginning of the full-scale war, German aid to Ukraine has amounted to 22bn euros, the German finance minister said.
In addition to military aid, Berlin also provides Kyiv with humanitarian aid, supports Ukrainian refugees and pays contributions to the International Monetary Fund, from where funds are allocated to support the Ukrainian economy.
The German finance minister arrived in the Ukrainian capital for the first time since the beginning of the war. He signed with the head of the Ukrainian Finance Ministry a memorandum of cooperation between the two countries, which is designed to expand assistance to the Ukrainian budget. In particular, the document envisages that Berlin will provide advisory support in the areas of customs policy, state investment management and privatization of state-owned enterprises.
On 20 July, EU foreign ministers discussed the possibility of allocating 5bn euros in annual military aid to Ukraine from the European Peace Facility over the next four years.
“This is an indicative assessment of the needs and our long-term security commitments to Ukraine”, EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell emphasized.
Earlier it became known that US President Joe Biden will request from Congress an additional 13 billion dollars for military aid to Ukraine. In December 2022, Congress decided to allocate funds to support Kyiv in the amount of 45 billion dollars. This money should have been enough until the end of the current fiscal year, which will come on September 30.
However, the Pentagon has already used up the budget it received and currently has $6 billion, which was found as a result of an accounting error. The error itself arose because old equipment from the warehouses was valued as new.
The Washington Post estimates that after February 24, 2022, the U.S. has sent $66.2 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. This amount is many times higher than those that Washington allocates to Israel (8.6 billion dollars in 2022-2023), Egypt (3.3 billion) and Jordan (2.9 billion).
