Some in the European media are finally starting to enter the phase of acceptance:
The continent long ago surrendered the ability to play a role in great power politics
Donald Trump refuses to fund Ukraine’s war effort, so Europe must do so on its own – that is the basic financial and military reality of this final phase of the conflict.
European leaders have lavished Ukraine with promises of support, drafted gigantic defence-spending proposals and even formulated plans to put European boots on the ground. But what has been conspicuously lacking are actual transfers of sufficient hard cash and weaponry to plug Kyiv’s estimated $60bn budget gap, pay for a comprehensive defence against Russia or even less mount any kind of pushback.
Meanwhile, the actual nuts and bolts of the war’s endgame are being thrashed out – however imperfectly – directly between Putin and Trump’s envoys without reference to Europe or to Ukraine.
The sad truth is that European leaders act like they play a part in great power politics, but in reality the continent has long surrendered the ability to fill that role. As news of the 28-point peace plan drafted by Trump’s man Steve Witkoff and Kremlin representative Kirill Dmitriev broke, Kaja Kallas, Europe’s foreign policy chief, spoke out to say that “the EU has a very clear two-point plan: first, weaken Russia; second, support Ukraine”.
Soon after, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer weighed in to say that the ultimate peace deal “requires the approval of the European partners or a consensus of the Allies”.
In theory, yes. Ukraine is a major European nation and its fate and security is the natural concern of Kyiv’s closest neighbours and allies. In practice, though, the top table of international diplomacy is reserved for nations ready and willing to deploy significant military and financial power to achieve their ends.
As historian Niall Ferguson put it bluntly in a recent tweet, “if you want to take back territory and try Putin, you have to win the war … realistically, Ukraine has never been in a position to defeat Russia.” By the same token neither Europe nor the US have had any interest in fighting a direct war with Moscow.
Europe’s politicians may lie to Ukraine and to themselves about their devotion to Kyiv’s cause, but the numbers tell a truer story.
Back in March, as Europe was realigning to the new reality that Washington was pulling its funding of Ukraine, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced a “ReArm Europe” plan that she said “could see up to €800bn poured into the defence sector over the next four years”. The EU’s first move was to tweak its borrowing rules to exclude defence investment, thereby potentially allowing members to borrow more to spend on defence.
Days later, von der Leyen announced €150bn of defence spending loans open to EU member states but with one proviso – 65 per cent of the military kit would have to come from suppliers in the EU, Norway or Ukraine. The rest could be spent in non-EU countries like Britain if they signed a security agreement with Brussels.
Kallas then presented another plan for EU members to chip in €40bn actual cash to finance arms for Kyiv, rather than for the EU’s own defence. But that proposal was rejected by Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Even a slimmed down pledge of €5bn, focused on just the artillery ammunition component of the rejected package, was also scrapped. Indeed even the term #ReArmEurope was deemed too militaristic by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. “I don’t like the term rearm,” objected Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez. “I think the EU is a political project of soft power … This is my principled objection to the term of rearm.”
With enemies like these, who needs friends?
On the economic front there’s a similar disconnect between Europe’s words and its deeds. By some estimates the EU paid Russia €311bn for its energy products since Feb 2022, while giving €187bn in support for Ukraine. “Sanctions are hitting Russia where it hurts,” claimed Kallas this week, adding that the EU is preparing its twentieth package of sanctions.
Yet the continent continues to import Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) while Hungary and Slovakia are busy negotiating sanctions opt-outs in order to continue importing piped Russian gas and oil. And the first really painful sanctions against Russian oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft are being introduced this month by Washington, not Brussels.
Who is buying Russian fossil fuels
The clear pattern that has emerged over four years of war is that Europe’s northeastern corner, led by the Scandinavians and the Baltics, have been the most consistently hawkish on Russia and adamant about the continent’s need to rearm. Finnish president Alexander Stubb has argued that Ukraine must be “militarised to the teeth” to deter Moscow, for instance, while Kallas said in January that Europe must “prepare for war” – after last year fantasising about breaking up the Russian Federation into little statelets.
But the European countries who will actually have to pay the bills have been more measured. Macron, for instance, while being wholeheartedly supportive of Kyiv diplomatically has spoken out against confiscating frozen Russian assets.
The irony is that Europe’s economy and defence sector may be smaller than the US’s, but not by that much. Washington this year is expected to spend $980bn on defence, the EU and Britain $525bn – and Russia some $154bn, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. France builds its own nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers, Sweden’s Gripen fighters are considered among the most sophisticated in the world, while the market capital of Germany’s Rheinmetall has overtaken that of car manufacturer Volkswagen.
US defence spending dwarfs Europe's
Germany’s Taurus cruise missiles and the UK-French SCALP-Storm shadow are comparable to the US workhorse Tomahawk missiles, albeit the Tomahawk having a much longer range. Indeed overall its Europe, not the US, which has given more funds to Ukraine over the course of the war. According to the Kiel Institute a Germany-based think tank that tracks international support for Ukraine, the US has spent a total of $130.6bn between January 24 2022 and June 30 2025 and Europe $165.7bn.
So why has Europe’s generosity not translated into more diplomatic heft in the Ukraine peace process, and why has the continent’s enormous armaments industry not been able to keep Ukraine supplied with air defences, armour, artillery and rockets that it needs? One answer is capacity, complicated by national differences. Europe’s militaries are vastly smaller than the US’s, and keep correspondingly smaller stockpiles.
The capacity of European factories is therefore limited too. And fatefully, though Nato equipment like the standard 155mm artillery shell is meant to be seamlessly interchangeable, “Ukraine’s experience has made clear that Nato … howitzers and munitions are not truly interoperable,” according to a recent report by West Point Military Academy’s Modern War Institute.
Europeans tend to spend their defence procurement money domestically, leading to a bewildering array of British, French, German, Czech, Swedish and Polish infantry fighting vehicles, all with different spare parts, operating on Ukrainian front lines. Overall, that’s made Europe’s military contribution bitty, complex and expensive.
More importantly in practical terms is that the most effective big-ticket weapons, from Patriot air defence missile batteries and ATACMs short range cruise missiles to F-16 fighters, are made in the US. Though Trump has cut funding, he’s still allowing Europeans to buy American equipment for donation to Kyiv, but that arrangement adds another layer of complication.
The most crucial problem of all for Europe is, bluntly, money. Spending is always a political choice and every major EU economy, as well as the UK, is facing a similar crisis of ballooning spending, deficits and debt.
Germany has been most generous to Kyiv, with Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, pledging €11.5bn in military aid in 2026. The lion’s share of that will remain in Germany and be spent on German-made equipment; effectively a form of military Keynesianism. But that doesn’t do much to help pay Kyiv’s bills, which EU officials propose to meet by raising more debt in the absence of member states’ actual cash.
With Russia advancing in Donbas and Zaporizhia, Ukraine’s military facing a severe manpower shortage and its corruption scandal-mired government running out of money, Volodymyr Zelensky’s options are limited.
Europe urges him to fight on, but cannot provide the funds for him to do so. That leaves Ukraine little choice but engage with Trump’s heavily Russian-accented peace proposal.