Berlin (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stressed that preparations for the $50 billion loan to Ukraine are well advanced.
The plans of the western G7 states and the EU will now be advanced “quickly and expeditiously,” Scholz said on Wednesday after a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He also spoke with the President of the European Commission about how large Europe’s share should be. “Everyone there is very far advanced,” he stressed. This is being coordinated closely with the US government. “The same applies, of course, to the inclusion of all those who also want to make a contribution as part of our G7 decision, Great Britain, Canada and Japan.” He would be happy if other states joined in, Scholz said. The technical requirements would be clarified “soon.” The G7 and the EU had agreed that income from frozen Russian assets in the West should be used to grant Ukraine a loan of up to 50 billion dollars to buy weapons. Recently, doubts had been raised as to whether the instrument would be available by 2025.
Both Scholz and Starmer confirmed that they would support Ukraine financially, politically and militarily for as long as it was necessary in the defensive struggle against Russia. In response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demand that Western states should abandon their restrictions on the use of supplied weapons on targets in Russia, Scholz only said that nothing had changed in the German position.
(Report by Andreas Rinke; edited by Sabine Ehrhardt. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and economics) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)
