Ukraine's president went to the European Council with a number. He left with a homework assignment.
Zelenskyy told leaders on Friday that the existing €90bn EU loan will not carry Ukraine through 2027. The loan was agreed in December 2025 and is split into €45bn for each of 2026 and 2027. He asked for "at least" €70bn more, for weapons, drone production and keeping the Ukrainian state running. He also invited European governments to invest directly in Ukrainian defence firms.
The European Council's conclusions reaffirmed support and welcomed the loan payments already flowing. They stopped there. Leaders asked the Commission to propose how to meet Ukraine's additional 2027 financing needs. Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis has said those needs already exceed the €45bn Ukraine received this year, and that the EU expects to cover about two-thirds of the external financing gap. Ursula von der Leyen said: "We will support you, as we did in previous winters." She did not name a figure.
The two hardest questions stayed shut. Whether to tap the roughly €210bn in frozen Russian central bank assets, a plan leaders declined to adopt in December 2025, choosing the loan instead, was not settled. Neither was how the bill would be shared between member states. The summit also ended without a deal on the 2028-2034 EU budget. A special budget summit is now scheduled for 26 November.
The money question lands in a worse strategic position than a year ago. President Donald Trump announced a deal on 9 October to bring Russian diesel onto US and global markets, with initial supplies above 300,000 tonnes, rising to 500,000 tonnes in November and 1 million in December, and US sanctions on Russian oil products suspended until April 2027. Ukraine paused its refinery strikes under US pressure, then said it would resume them. US defence officials confirmed that Washington threatened to withdraw intelligence sharing over the strikes. Ukraine also reported disruption to the Starshield satellite system its military relies on. Elon Musk said SpaceX was not behind it and called the systems US government-owned.
The European Council's conclusions expressed regret at the US easing of sanctions. That is polite language for a real gap. Europe has been trying to keep Washington on Ukraine's side for years. Many Europeans now wonder whether that effort has failed. Europe can still supply cash. What it cannot yet replace quickly is missile early warning, high-end air-defence interceptors and battlefield satellite links, all of which have been American.
Italy's Giorgia Meloni told the Senate on 14 October that the diesel deal was "a very risky choice". She said it gives Moscow legitimacy while its bombs fall on Ukrainian cities, hands it revenue and weakens sanctions. She also proposed that the EU appoint a single representative to negotiate on Russia and Ukraine.
France's Marine Le Pen, the frontrunner in next year's presidential election, went the other way. She told the Financial Times she would halt financial aid to Ukraine within six months of taking office, saying France cannot do more. Asked whether Russia was the main threat to Europe's security, she said she could not read Putin's mind. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the same paper that abandoning Ukraine "will have an enormous impact on the entire political order of this continent".
Ukraine's funding is now a 2027 problem with a visible deadline. The Commission's proposal will have to arrive alongside a budget fight that leaders have already failed to settle, and a French election that could change the stance of one of the EU's biggest contributors. Expect the proposal to lean on loans and on the proceeds of frozen assets rather than on the assets themselves, because Belgium, which holds most of them, has blocked more. Watch the 26 November budget summit. If Ukraine's €70bn is not in the room by then, Kyiv will plan 2027 around a gap, not a guarantee.
