One of the topics discussed by President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy in “that telecon,” was the degree of aid Germany has provided Ukraine in the latter’s on-going struggle against Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Neither considered Germany’s actions anywhere near adequate.
Deutsche Welle demurs from that position.
[A]ccording to the latest OECD figures, Germany is the third largest donor to Ukraine after the European Union as a whole and the US.
Those amounts?
[F]igures provided to DW by the German Foreign Ministry indicate that since 2014, the country has pumped almost €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) of bilateral financial aid into Ukraine. This total includes some €544 million of official development cooperation, €110 million in humanitarian aid, a financial loan of €500 million, and some €25 million for stabilization measures, such as conflict monitoring and the promotion of the rule of law.
Germany has paid another €200 million to Ukraine via EU aid contributions.
That works out to all of €240 million ($260 million) per year. And none of it actual material assistance: no money at all for defensive weapons systems or even individual protective equipment, much less systems that would help Ukraine drive the invader back out. And money for “conflict monitoring?” Ukraine is already fully capable of watching the Russians in their nation. The other aid, in other circumstances, would be very useful, but with Ukraine in the military and political straits in which it exists today, the results of that aid are very much in doubt in the face of that Russian occupation and the continued Russian effort to drag the nation back under the Russian yoke.
Third largest amount of aid behind the EU and the US: what a statement of the paltry level of aid that is—especially considering that, during the Obama years, the US also refused to provide any serious aid at all to Ukraine, limiting our “largesse” to blankets and medicines, but not a single bullet or other self-defense capability.
Returning to Germany’s alleged contributions: far from helping Ukraine, Germany has utterly betrayed the nation, functionally repudiating the Budapest Memorandum as it has. Instead, Germany has pushed for the quickly-failed Minsk Protocol, and continues pushing for Minsk II. Both of these codify the dismantling of Ukraine that the Memorandum was supposed to prevent—hence the betrayal.