In Ukraine, the 2026 budget will not allow for any decisive counteroffensive

Facing Russia, Ukraine is financing deterrence on a NATO scale, without integration at the NATO level. Ukraine must be recognized as indispensable to Europe’s future—and action must follow.

An opinion by Maria Repko, Deputy Director of the Centre for Economic Strategy

A budget is never just a sequence of numbers. It is a political text, a map of priorities, and a signal to allies. Ukraine’s recently presented 2026 draft budget is all of these at once. It reflects the country’s priorities—already pushed to their limits—but it also highlights the EU’s hesitation to shape the course of the war. For the third consecutive year (2024–2026), this is a survival budget, almost identical to that of 2023: sufficient to slow Russia’s advance to 10–20 km² per day, but insufficient to enable a decisive Ukrainian breakthrough.

This “survival budget” is not a sign of timidity or lack of reform, but of physics. Defense absorbs all central revenues from domestic resources—around a quarter of GDP (€51 billion according to CES estimates)—which, after the latest amendments to the finance law, is actually lower than this year. The figures will likely be adjusted upward during the year, as they were in 2024 and again this year, but for now the outlook is bleak. The 2026 budget projects €58 billion in revenue and leaves a €42 billion deficit to be filled by international aid. It is a survival plan—already outdated when first introduced in 2023—and incapable of allowing a decisive counteroffensive. The responsibility does not lie with Ukraine, which has long reached its internal limits, but with Europe, which must finally decide how to mobilize Russian assets and fund the defense effort at a level that can make a lasting peace possible. With current means, that goal is unattainable.

Since 2022, and even before, Europe’s approach has followed a donor–beneficiary logic: injections of support tied to reform criteria. The same framework shapes the Ukraine Facility, the current budgetary and investment support instrument. However well-designed, this mechanism remains inadequate if Ukraine is to become part of the EU’s defense perimeter. With the United States retreating from its role as “global policeman,” it falls to the EU to think strategically about its eastern flank for the next decade—and likely beyond.

Ukraine already performs deterrence, force deployment, logistics, and resilience functions that protect the rest of Europe from direct exposure to Moscow’s aggression. Recent drone incursions into Poland and Romania and hybrid operations in the Baltic Sea show that Eastern security cannot be taken lightly. Ukraine’s future budgets must formalize this reality: the country is financing deterrence on a NATO scale, without NATO integration. And at the current level, this remains far from sufficient.

This is why Ukraine’s 2026 budget matters so much to Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. It is not a plea for endless charity, but a structural proposal: to recognize Ukraine as indispensable to Europe’s future and act accordingly, financing the defense effort at the European level—where the fight is taking place. Supporting Ukraine as a partner means stabilizing Europe’s eastern border at Donetsk rather than at the Danube. Leaving Ukraine trapped in an annual project logic will sooner or later bring instability to the EU’s own borders. Ukraine’s 2026 draft budget is therefore not just a national financial plan. It is also an invitation to Europe to think long term—and finally treat Ukraine as part of its own architecture.

Origin: La Libre.