{"id":37797,"date":"2025-10-13T15:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/?p=37797"},"modified":"2025-10-13T15:59:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:59:04","slug":"ukraines-2026-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/ukraines-2026-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s 2026 Budget: a mirror of Europe\u2019s security weaknesses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u00abUkraine\u2019s 2026 draft budget is not merely a national financial plan. It is also an invitation to Europe to think long-term \u2014 and finally treat Ukraine as part of its own architecture,\u00bb warns Maria Repko<\/strong>, Deputy Director of the Centre for Economic Strategy<\/strong> in Kyiv.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A budget is never just a collection of numbers. It is a political text, a map of priorities, and a signal to allies. Ukraine\u2019s recently presented 2026 draft budget is all of these at once. It reflects the country\u2019s already overstretched priorities but also highlights the EU\u2019s hesitation in shaping the course of the war. For the third consecutive year (2024\u20132026), it is a survival budget<\/strong>, almost identical to that of 2023: sufficient to slow Russia\u2019s advance to 10\u201320 km\u00b2 per day, but insufficient to enable a decisive Ukrainian breakthrough.<\/p>\n

This \u201csurvival budget\u201d is not a sign of timidity or lack of reform \u2014 it is a matter of physics. Defense spending absorbs all central revenues from domestic sources, amounting to around a quarter of GDP<\/strong> (\u20ac51 billion, according to CES estimates), which, based on the latest amendments to the budget law, is actually less than this year. These figures will likely be revised upward during the year, as happened in 2024 and again this year, but for now, the outlook remains bleak.<\/p>\n

The 2026 budget projects \u20ac58 billion in revenues<\/strong> and leaves a \u20ac42 billion deficit<\/strong> to be filled by international assistance. It is a survival plan, already outdated upon introduction in 2023, incapable of enabling a decisive counteroffensive. The responsibility does not lie with Ukraine \u2014 whose internal limits have long been reached \u2014 but with Europe<\/strong>, which must finally decide how to mobilize frozen Russian assets and fund the defense effort at a level that makes lasting peace possible. With the current means, this goal is unattainable.<\/p>\n

Since 2022 \u2014 and even before \u2014 Europe\u2019s approach has followed a donor-beneficiary logic<\/strong>: injections of aid tied to reform criteria. The same framework underpins the Ukraine Facility<\/strong>, the current budgetary and investment support mechanism. However well designed, this instrument remains inadequate if Ukraine is to become part of the EU\u2019s defense perimeter. With the United States retreating from its role as \u201cglobal policeman,\u201d the EU must think strategically about its eastern flank for the next decade \u2014 and likely beyond.<\/p>\n

Ukraine already fulfills deterrence, force deployment, logistics, and resilience functions that shield the rest of Europe from Moscow\u2019s direct aggression. Recent drone incursions into Poland and Romania, as well as hybrid operations in the Baltic Sea, show that eastern security cannot be taken lightly. Ukraine\u2019s future budgets must formalize this reality: Ukraine is financing NATO-scale deterrence without NATO-level integration.<\/strong> And at current levels, that remains far from sufficient.<\/p>\n

That is why Ukraine\u2019s 2026 budget matters just as much to Brussels, Berlin, and Paris<\/strong>. It is not a call for endless charity but a structural proposal<\/strong> \u2014 to recognize Ukraine as essential to Europe\u2019s future and act accordingly, by financing the defense effort at the European level, where the battle is actually being fought. Supporting Ukraine as a partner stabilizes Europe\u2019s eastern frontier in Donetsk rather than on the Danube. Leaving Ukraine trapped in an annual project logic will, sooner or later, bring instability to the EU\u2019s own borders.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s 2026 draft budget, therefore, is not just a national financial plan. It is also an invitation to Europe to think long-term \u2014 and to finally treat Ukraine as part of its own architecture<\/p>\n

Source:<\/em> Lopinion.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00abUkraine\u2019s 2026 draft budget is not merely a national financial plan. It is also an invitation to Europe to think long-term \u2014 and finally treat Ukraine as part of its own architecture,\u00bb warns Maria Repko, Deputy Director of the Centre for Economic Strategy in Kyiv. A budget is never just a collection of numbers. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[149,200],"tags":[546],"experts":[172],"news_type":[179],"class_list":["post-37797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-en","category-news-list-en","tag-budget-en","experts-maria-repko","news_type-blog-type"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37797"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37802,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37797\/revisions\/37802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37797"},{"taxonomy":"experts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/experts?post=37797"},{"taxonomy":"news_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_type?post=37797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}