BERLIN, November 28. /TASS/. The German government will continue to support Kiev despite budget difficulties, but it will have to take funds for this, in particular, from non-military budget items, a German lawmaker told TASS.
"The ruling coalition will simply take funds from other budget lines. It is likely that money will be cut from the social sphere or healthcare, because the coalition sees its task as not letting Ukraine lose," Steffen Kotre, a member of the Bundestag (German parliament) for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), said. "It is unlikely that the government will come up with the idea of deporting illegal immigrants and saving billions," the lawmaker said. In his opinion, in any case, the German taxpayer will have to bear the costs in the end.
Germany is facing a budget crisis that could lead to adjustments in the financing of various projects next year. On November 21, the German Finance Ministry decided to temporarily freeze almost all allocations from the 2023 budget due to the Constitutional Court's ruling on the illegality of the redistribution of old unclaimed loan funds worth 60 billion euros.
On November 11, that is, before the court ruling, the German newspaper Bild reported, citing its own sources in the German Defense Ministry, that the government intends to increase military aid to Ukraine from 4 billion to 8 billion euros in 2024. Later, the Der Tagesspiegel newspaper pointed out that the budget crisis was jeopardizing plans to increase military aid to Ukraine. On November 25, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Berlin would continue to support Kiev. The total amount of German aid to Ukraine - humanitarian, financial and military - exceeded 25 billion euros.