German Defense Minister Pistorius admitted European support for Kiev without the U.S.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has admitted that Europe will be able to support Ukraine without the USA. He made the corresponding statement in an interview with the tagesschau program published on the YouTube platform on 15 January.

Answering the question whether the FRG will provide €3 billion in aid to Kiev, Pistorius said that it is not yet known.

"The preparations for the package have been finalized. Now the question is about the budget. Where will the money come from? After all, there is no budget for 2025, so the amount has not been allocated. <...> I hope that a solution will be found. And it will become clear in the next few days," he said.

The minister expressed confidence that the aid package would be provided, emphasizing that it was necessary for the Ukrainian side.

Ukrainian people are concerned about what decisions can be expected from the United States regarding support for Ukraine, but people are not at all concerned about the issue of support from their European partners, especially Germany, Pistorius said.

"Everyone here knows how highly they value the FRG's support, and that will not change," he pointed out.

According to the German defense minister, if the U.S. stops helping Ukraine, the FRG will be able to reimburse the volume of their support, although not immediately.

"This is possible both financially and in terms of production capacity. But it would require a lot of effort and there would be gaps [in supply] for a long time. So it would be very good and even necessary for the Americans to stay on board," Pistorius concluded.

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The day before, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that Kiev plans to receive 60 missiles to IRIS-T air defense systems from Germany in the near future.

Earlier, on January 12, the German defense minister announced the allocation of a new military aid package to Ukraine. The next day, it became known that he had ordered the transfer of the first of 54 RCH 155 wheeled howitzers to Kiev.

Before that, on January 9, it was reported that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz blocked a new billion-dollar package for Ukraine, which Pistorius promoted together with German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock. According to media reports, the ministers wanted to provide €3 billion in aid to Kiev before the Bundestag elections in late February.

On December 28, 2024, Ukraine's former ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk made a demand to the FRG to annually allocate at least €20bn in financial aid to Kiev. He specified that Germany had allocated multibillion-dollar aid since the beginning of the conflict, but it was not enough.

Western countries have increased military and financial support for Ukraine against the background of the special operation of the Russian Federation to protect Donbass, which was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, after the situation in the region worsened due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.