Germany is helping its own population with 65 billion euros to deal with the social consequences of “Putin’s war”. In fact, the large amount of money is primarily used to ensure social acceptance of the Ukraine aid. But are the relations actually right?

65, 3, 12 – Three numbers in one sentence: Germany spends more than 20 times as much money on dealing with the social consequences of the Ukraine war as it does on Ukraine aid, while Russia gives the perpetrator four times as much money for Like the victim, oil and gas pays Ukraine for his survival.

What these numbers say: Germany could help Ukraine far more, including militarily. But the traffic light government does not do that.

It’s not the money, there’s enough of it, as the currently announced EUR 65 billion and the total of EUR 95 billion, including the first aid packages, show. It’s a political decision. Chancellor Olaf Scholz calls it “restraint”.

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The numbers can also be read like this: The price that the federal government pays for maintaining aid to Ukraine is up to 30 times higher than the aid to Ukraine itself: financial, humanitarian and military aid add up to 3 billion euros – 95 We spend billions on the social consequences of the war.

But that’s not all: Germany paid around 12 billion euros for Russian energy supplies in the first four months of the war alone and thus transferred four times as much money to Moscow as to Kyiv – 3 billion.

If you take the German military aid of a good one billion euros alone, Berlin has transferred 12 times more money to Putin’s war chest than to Zelenskyj’s war chest. The figures come from the federal government, the Ukraine tracker of the Center for the World Economy in Kiel and the Finnish Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea).

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In any case, they drastically relativize the impression that Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock gave in her speech in Prague. Among other things, she said that Germany would help permanently. Germany’s aid may be permanent, but Germany spends incomparably more money on its own than on the Ukrainian population.

However, the figures also dismiss Olaf Scholz’s claim that Germany is doing what is necessary with regard to Ukraine into the realm of fables. The comparison with the aid of other countries for Ukraine makes this clear.

The corresponding figures – by money per capita, which is the fair yardstick – clearly show: the states that were once Soviet and are now free, democratic and western, are helping Ukraine the most – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Followed by the countries that were once members of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet-led eastern military alliance – Poland at the lone leader.

Countries that share a border with modern-day Russia, such as Norway, follow. Then there are those countries that in post-war history – from experience – were always critical of Russia: the USA and Great Britain.

In political terms, this means that anyone who has gotten to know Russia no longer wants to have anything to do with it. You are even prepared to risk your own safety for this. In contrast, in countries that have engaged with Russia for their own benefit, such as Germany and Italy, support for Ukraine is comparatively weak.

Germany, although part of its country was occupied by the Soviets until 1989, ranks 13th in the Kiel ranking of supporters of Ukraine. It is cold consolation for Berlin that France fares even worse.

The meager support provided by Germany, France and Italy for Ukraine is likely to have serious euro-strategic consequences: the times when Germany and France believed they could lead Europe are now coming to an end. A new leading power has long been growing in Eastern Europe, Poland, which, how embarrassing for Europe, is led by a nationalist government.

Which in turn demands billions in compensation from Germany for Hitler’s Germany attack in the Second World War and thus plays into the hands of Vladimir Putin, who has only been waiting for such intra-European skirmishes.

In any case, this is what the figures show: Ironically, in times of war, that “turning point” which consists in the fact that there is again a Russian military threat to the West, those two states, which rhetorically do not want to be surpassed in European values-solidarity, in hard currency than, well, mere political Sunday speakers.

Germany, under the leadership of Olaf Scholz, has always done too little, as Der Spiegel judges, but again as late as possible. It doesn’t look like this is about to change either; The Kiel researchers have registered that Germany’s military aid has all but come to a standstill in the past eight weeks.

And the military offensive that Ukraine has apparently launched in the south of its country against the Russian occupiers also has no backing from Germany.

Of those old Marder and Leopard tanks from Bundeswehr stocks that, according to the respected military strategist Carlo Marsala, would help Ukraine in its counter-offensive in Cherson, Germany supplies: Nullkommanull.

How this fits in with the constantly repeated assertion that Germany’s freedom is also being defended in Ukraine remains the secret of the federal government.

In any case, the statement by the Federal Defense Minister Christina Lambrecht (SPD) that Germany can no longer deliver anything from its stocks because of its NATO obligations is just as questionable: where would German weapons for the defense of a country that is currently counted among the candidate countries for European membership be? needed more than in Ukraine?

It is noticeable that the procrastinators are always social democrats. This may have something to do with the social democratic invention of Russia as a change-through-trade partner, but also with the widespread equation of the Soviet Union with Russia.

And as the “renegade” Social Democrat Michael Roth points out: the Ukraine conflict is not about a war between two Soviet republics, but about the war between two former Soviet republics, one of which wants to be a dictatorship and the other a democracy.

With openness (glasnost?), SPD man Roth points out the domestic political functionality of the 65/95 billion aid: “Solidarity with the Ukraine needs social acceptance in democracies.”

Apparently the golden days of social democracy are over, when social acceptance of solidarity did not require a price tag.