In Brussels, Ukraine’s Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko put a price on the country’s needs for 2027: about €69 billion, including approximately €40 billion for military expenses and €29 billion to keep the state functioning.
The scale of that requirement has left the European Union facing a difficult choice. It can continue to raise money against its own budget, or find a way to draw more directly on Russian sovereign assets immobilised since the war began.
The Ukraine Donor Platform met in Brussels on September 29. By late 2025, Ukraine was expected to exhaust its funds early in 2026 without further support.
Ukraine’s estimate of its external financing requirement for 2027 is $52.6 billion. Approximately $20 billion of that sum was expected to come from existing sources, leaving about $32.6 billion uncovered at the time of reporting.
The EU has already used income connected to the frozen holdings. Since the beginning of 2024, it has transferred 8 billion euros ($9.1 billion) to Ukraine from revenues generated by frozen Russian assets. Starting in 2024, the bloc began taking profits from the reinvestment of Bank of Russia reserves.
Those proceeds are small beside the stock of assets under discussion. Around 300 billion euros of Russian assets are immobilised worldwide. More than half of that approximately 300 billion euros is held within Euroclear in Belgium. France also holds frozen Russian money, property and securities in Paris banks, company registries and court files.
Poland has pressed the case for putting the assets to work. Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorsky said Russian state assets frozen in Europe will not be returned to Moscow and should be used for Ukraine’s reconstruction or to strengthen Europe’s own defence capabilities.
On 3 December 2025, the European Commission set out a package of five legislative proposals to address funding for 2026 and 2027. It offered two routes: a reparations loan using cash balances held by banks and financial companies on immobilised Russian central bank assets, or joint EU borrowing guaranteed by headroom in the EU budget.
EU leaders then agreed on 18 and 19 December 2025 to borrow on the markets and lend 90 billion euros to Kyiv for 2026 and 2027. The loan would be raised on capital markets with the European budget as security. Approximately €60 billion is intended for defence purchases, while €30 billion is for budget support and state operations.
The leaders also told the Commission to continue work on a reparations loan based on immobilised Russian sovereign assets. That work faces resistance from Belgium, which continues to oppose any use of the assets. Italy and Bulgaria have recently joined Belgium’s position, while Hungary opposes further support altogether.
On 30 September 2026, an unnamed European diplomat, frustrated by another discussion of Ukraine’s financial requirements, put the mood bluntly: “It feels like we are watering the desert.”
Comments (0)