Follow us on social

Zelensky

The 2026 bill for the Ukraine war is already in the mail

With talks stalled, Zelensky says he needs more money for next year

Analysis | Europe

Ukraine is already asking for more money to continue fighting into 2026, a sure sign that President Volodmyr Zelensky has no plans to end the war.

With the battlefield continuing to favor Russia, European leaders have their collective heads in the sand on who will pay. How long before President Trump walks away?

At the G7 Finance and Central Bank governors’ meeting in Banff on May 21, Ukraine’s Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko sought financial support for 2026, “including the provision of support to the Ukrainian army through its integration into the European security system,” according to reports.

I have said before that Ukraine cannot keep fighting into 2026 without a significant injection of European money. Even if the war were to stop tomorrow, Ukraine would still face a huge funding black hole. And that prolonging the war simply extends Ukraine’s indebtedness and delinquency, nudging it every closer towards the status of a failed state.

Making light of the price tag, German-based Kiel Institute has suggested extra EU support to Ukraine’s army would only need to cost an extra 0.2% of GDP or $43.3 billion per year. This assumes no additional U.S. funding under President Trump and is a figure practically identical to the $41.5 billion figure I forecast two months ago.

The Ukrainian side pointed out two assumptions that underpin their request — first, that funding Ukraine’s military supports macro-financial stability in that country. That is untrue. By far the leading cause of the increased financial distress of Ukraine is its vast and unsustainable prosecution of a war that it cannot win. As I have said before, ending the war would allow for immediate reductions to be made to military spending, which accounts for 65% of total government expenditure.

Second, that paying for Ukraine’s military is keeping Europe safer. It isn’t. The best route to European security would be to end the war tomorrow. The risk of escalation only grows for the longer the war continues and President Zelensky resorts to increasingly desperate tactics as the battlefield realities turn against him.

This latest request for money is a clear signal that Zelensky is not serious about U.S. demands for peace, and would prefer to continue the fight, drawing directly upon European funds. It has long been clear to me that Zelensky is evading peace because it would bring his presidency to a close, not to mention elevate risks to his personal safety.

He has therefore been piling on more pressure for Western leaders to impose more sanctions and other measures, which will only serve to prolong the war. Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent brain wave that the U.S. impose 500% secondary tariffs on countries that trade with Russia is a classic example. No doubt other countries, China in particular, would respond negatively to this, as it has already to the launch of Trump’s tariff war. It would kill President Trump’s efforts at engagement with Russia, by boxing him in to Beltway demands in an identical rerun of his first presidency, making him appear toothless in the eyes of Putin.

But these are not the real points. Having suffered over 20,000 sanctions already since 2014 yet maintaining a stable, growing economy, what makes people believe that Russia will back down to even more sanctions now?

The war continues to favor Russia on the battlefield. In recent days, in addition to expanding territory in the south of Donetsk, the Russian army has made major gains in the pocket around now-occupied Toretsk. Progress, as always, is slow and grinding as it has been since the start of 2024. Ukraine has undoubtedly mounted a formidable defence of its territory, for which its fighters deserve great credit.

But Russia has never fully mobilized the country for the fight in Ukraine, for various domestic political reasons. Putin also wants to maintain relations with developing country partners and a more devastating military offensive against Ukraine would make that harder.

Pumping more billions into Ukraine’s army will merely slow the speed of defeat. Even the Ukrainians now accept that they cannot reclaim lost territory by force. Ending the war would at least draw a line in the sand for future negotiations.

For their part, Europe simply can’t afford to pump another $40 billion per year into Ukraine’s army, at a time when member states are trying to boost their own militaries, revive their flagging economies and deal with an upsurge in nationalist political parties that want to end the war.

An April pledge for extra military donations in 2025 elicited just $2.5 billion per year from Germany, and reconfirmed the £6 billion from the UK already committed, without pledging new funds. Keir Starmer’s government is in the process of making an embarrassing U-turn on previously agreed cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners.

I seriously doubt that British people would consider another big increase in funds for Ukraine’s war would be a sensible investment if peace was on the table. That this isn’t actively discussed in Britain, in a way that it is in the United States, is driven by the complete lockdown of debate in the UK and European mainstream media.

Right from the beginning, the war in Ukraine has been an attritional battle of who can sustain the fight for the longest period of time. A longer war will always favor Russia because the economic liability Europe faces will ratchet up to the point where it becomes politically unsustainable. We make the assumption that Russia’s aims in Ukraine are to prevent NATO expansion and to protect the rights of native Russian speakers in that country, and of course, on the surface, they are.

But on the current track, Putin gets the added benefit of watching the European Union project slowly implode, without the need to go all in on Ukraine.

President Trump for his part continues to walk a fine line that involves criticizing both Putin and Zelensky for the continuance of the war. In the face of intransigence on all sides, I wonder how long it will be before he washes his hands of the mess and walks away.


Top photo credit: Volodymyr Zelensky (Shutterstock/Dmytro Larin)
Analysis | Europe
Poland farmers protest EU
Top photo credit: Several thousand people rally against a proposed EU migration scheme in Warsaw, Poland on 11 October, 2025. In a rally organized by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party thousands gathered to oppose the EU migration pact and an agriculture deal with Mercosur countries. (Photo by Jaap Arriens / Sipa USA)

Poland’s Janus face on Ukraine is untenable

Europe

Of all the countries in Europe, Poland grapples with deep inconsistencies in its approach to both Russia and to Ukraine. As a result, the pro-Europe coalition government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk is coming under increasing pressure as the duplicity becomes more evident.

In its humanitarian response to Ukraine since the war began in 2022, Poland has undoubtedly been one of the most generous among European countries. Its citizens and NGOs threw open their doors to provide food and shelter to Ukrainian women and children fleeing for safety. By 2023, over 1.6 million Ukrainian refugees had applied for asylum or temporary protection in Poland, with around 1 million still present in Poland today.

keep readingShow less
Trump Zelensky
Top image credit: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over lunch in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 17, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Finally, Trump takes a sensible turn on Ukraine

Europe

Claims that President Trump bullied President Zelensky and urged him to withdraw from the whole of the Donbas at their latest meeting in Washington will doubtless cause the usual furore in the Western media and commentariat, but they cannot be substantiated and are a distraction from the really important issue concerning U.S. and NATO strategy, which is whether the alliance should continue support to Ukraine at existing levels or seek radically to escalate.

Here, President Trump made the right decision by pulling back from his previous suggestion that the U.S. might provide Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine — presumably as a result of his recent telephone discussion with President Putin.

keep readingShow less
Nord Stream pipeline
Top image credit: A Ukrainian diver, Volodymyr Z., who is wanted by Germany over his alleged involvement in the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipeline and severely disrupted Russian gas supplies to Europe, walks escorted by Polish Police at the district court in Warsaw, Poland, October 1, 2025. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

What is Poland hiding besides the Ukrainian Nord Steam suspect?

Europe

It wasn’t that long ago that the mysterious attack on the Nord Stream pipelines was a massive outrage across the Western world.

With Russia the presumed culprit, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen vowed the “strongest possible response,” while a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared it “a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.