«Ukraine’s 2026 draft budget is not merely 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,» warns Maria Repko, Deputy Director of the Centre for Economic Strategy in Kyiv.
A budget is never just a collection 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 already overstretched priorities but also highlights the EU’s hesitation in shaping the course of the war. For the third consecutive year (2024–2026), it 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 — it is a matter of physics. Defense spending absorbs all central revenues from domestic sources, amounting to around a quarter of GDP (€51 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.
The 2026 budget projects €58 billion in revenues and leaves a €42 billion deficit 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 It is a survival plan, already outdated upon introduction in 2023, incapable of enabling a decisive counteroffensive.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 — whose internal limits have long been reached — but with Europe, 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.
Since 2022 — and even before — Europe’s approach has followed a donor-beneficiary logic: injections of aid tied to reform criteria. The same framework underpins the Ukraine Facility, the current budgetary and investment support mechanism. However well designed, this instrument 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,” the EU must think strategically about its eastern flank for the next decade — and likely beyond.
Ukraine already fulfills deterrence, force deployment, logistics, and resilience functions that shield the rest of Europe from Moscow’s 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’s future budgets must formalize this reality: Ukraine is financing NATO-scale deterrence without NATO-level integration. And at current levels, that remains far from sufficient.
That is why Ukraine’s 2026 budget matters just as much to Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. It is not a call for endless charity but a structural proposal — to recognize Ukraine as essential to Europe’s 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’s 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’s own borders.
Ukraine’s 2026 draft budget, therefore, is not just a national financial plan. It is also an invitation to Europe to think long-term — and to finally treat Ukraine as part of its own architecture
Source: Lopinion.
