Germany's far right calls for cutting benefits for Ukrainian refugees
Ukrainian refugees in Germany are receiving "unjustified" social payments and should return to their home country, a co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Tino Chrupalla, said in an interview on Aug. 10.
Talking to the ZDF news channel, the co-leader of Germany's strongest opposition party said that "there are refugees who have come to Germany (from Ukraine), who are also receiving unjustified Bürgergeld (a form of unemployment benefits) here, and who have to return to their own country."
Roughly 5.6 million Ukrainian refugees remain abroad after fleeing Russia's full-scale invasion, according to U.N. data. The largest number, around 1.2 million, reside in Germany, a country that has provided extensive military, economic, and humanitarian support to Kyiv.
As of August, 272,000 Ukrainian refugees in Germany were employed and paid their contributions to social insurance funds, Deutsche Welle reported. Some 700,000 Ukrainians were eligible to receive Bürgergeld as of March, a drop of 4,300 people from last year, according to the German public broadcaster.
The AfD, a radical party that saw a surge in popularity in recent months, has consistently criticized Berlin's pro-Ukraine policy, speaking out against the provision of arms and other support to the war-torn country.
The nationalist party has been classified as "extremist" by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, and its members have been under investigation for ties to Russian and Chinese espionage networks.
Chrupalla's co-chair in the AfD party, Alice Weidel, also criticized social benefits for Ukrainain refugees, saying on Aug. 7 that Bürgergeld payments for Ukrainians should be abolished and replaced with lower-level payments for asylum seekers.
In the ZDF interview, Chrupalla urged a quick end to the war in Ukraine, adding that there might be no alternatives to Kyiv ceding territory for the sake of peace.
Describing Ukraine's partially occupied eastern Donbas region as composed of "primarily pro-Russian areas," the far-right leader also noted that "over 3 million Ukrainians have fled to Russia."
At least 2.8 million Ukrainians are believed to have left for Russia in the wake of the full-scale war, including those forcibly deported, lacking other routes of escape due to hostilities, or those with family or other ties in Russia.
"Do we really believe that we can defeat the world's largest nuclear power and, what's more, win this war, which is not ours?" Chrupalla said.
The comments come ahead of a high-level summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15, as Trump signaled the Kremlin is interested in "swapping" land as part of a ceasefire deal.
A source in Ukraine's Presidential Office told the Kyiv Independent that Moscow's demands include Kyiv's full withdrawal from two of the partly occupied Ukrainian regions — Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
It remains unclear whether President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has already rejected any territorial concessions to Russia, will be invited to the meeting.
