Scholz Says Germany to Support Kyiv ‘as Long as Necessary’

(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany’s support for Ukraine won’t let up as he sought to blunt concerns that budget tightening within his coalition will halt funding to the war-battered nation. 

“We will continue to support Ukraine as long as necessary,” Scholz told reporters during a trip to Moldova on Wednesday. “Everybody can depend on us.”

Scholz’s government this week sought to tamp down a debate about Ukraine funding following a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper that spending constraints meant that no new additional funds would be earmarked for Ukrainian military aid. 

The German leader said that his government remained the European Union’s biggest financial supporter of Ukraine. 

Scholz cited €4 billion ($4.5 billion) earmarked in Germany’s budget next year and pointed to a Group of Seven agreement this year to provide some $50 billion in new aid backed by the profits generated by frozen Russian central bank assets. 

Generating the central bank funds is “technically difficult but clarified politically,” Scholz said. 

Moldova’s EU Ambitions

The chancellor’s coalition has been mired in bickering for months over budget spending that’s affected by strict constitutional debt limits. The parties sealed a final agreement on next year’s spending plan only after weeks of squabbling over limited funds. 

Standing alongside Moldovan President Maia Sandu after talks in the capital Chisinau, Scholz reinforced Germany’s support for Moldova’s bid to join the European Union, which is in the interests of the bloc, Germany as well as Moldova, he said.  

The former Soviet republic, wedged between war-battered Ukraine and EU-member state Romania, plans to hold a referendum on joining the 27-member bloc on Oct. 20, in parallel with a presidential election that Sandu is slated to win for a second term. 

Sandu, first elected on 2020 on a wave of pro-European support, has sought to root out corruption and cement a Western-style democracy even as she’s raised the alarm of persistent Russian campaigns of destabilization and disinformation. 

Fully reliant on Russia for its gas imports before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moldova faces a steep challenge in shifting its energy system to the West. The government in Chisinau put its gas sector on alert earlier this month over fears that Ukraine’s shock incursion into Russian territory may disrupt the Kremlin’s gas supplies that still transit Ukraine. 

--With assistance from Irina Vilcu and Andra Timu.

(Updates with coalition tension, Moldova’s ambitions from seventh paragraph.)

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