The candidate for Chancellor of Germany from the party "Alternative for Germany" Alice Weidel said that the authorities in the country have been "twisting the spiral of escalation" for several years towards the Russian Federation, including the supply of weapons to Kiev.
„What has the German government done towards Russia over the past three years? The spiral of escalation has been tightening. „We have opposed Russia verbally, financially and even with the supply of weapons“, she said in an interview with the newspaper Bild. According to the politician, the supply of German tanks to Ukraine, which are now "being used against Russia for the first time since World War II", is evidence of "complete forgetting of history“ by the German authorities.
Weidel also called for rapid negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and an end to the sanctions policy that is harming the German economy.
Germany is the second largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine after the United States. As noted by the official representative of the German cabinet, Steffen Hebestreit, since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Germany has provided Kiev with various types of assistance worth a total of about EUR 44 billion. In accordance with the agreement on the 2025 budget, Germany must allocate about EUR 4 billion for military support to Ukraine, which is half as much as in 2024. However, the budget has not yet been approved by the Bundestag.