The Second Front in The War of Attrition: Moscow is achieving greater success in destabilising European politics than on the battlefield in Donbas

At the summit on 23 October, EU countries failed to reach an agreement on the use of frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine and postponed the decision until December. Belgium, under whose jurisdiction these funds are held,is demanding more reliable guarantees for the loan that would replace these assets. The urgency in adopting a decision stems from the fact that the previously functioning ERA funding mechanism for Ukraine will be exhausted next year and will not cover all of Kyiv’s financial needs.

Concerns that the countries of ‘Greater Europe’, which have entirely replaced the United States in providing financial and military assistance to Ukraine, reduced their level of military support in July–August appear premature and exaggerated. Analysis by Re:Russia indicates that this is most likely a case of normal fluctuations, with the average monthly level of both financial and military assistance still exceeding that of last year. However, it is somewhat worrying that the volume of pledged military aid to Ukraine over the first eight months of the year was 27% lower than during the same period last year. Yet these figures do not include the autumn agreements on future aid reached in the Ramstein format and following the EU summit in October.

An analysis of all assistance provided and pledged to Ukraine shows that 85–90% of its total volume comes from around twelve countries of the so-called 'Northern Coalition', which includes Germany, the United Kingdom, the Scandinavian and Baltic states, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, and Canada. Meanwhile, aid from the countries of Central and Southern Europe remains extremely limited, despite the presence in this group of such countries as Spain, Italy, and France. This uneven distribution of the burden complicates the sustainable financing of Ukraine and highlights the emergence of 'two Europes' with differing political orientations.

Overall, to maintain support for Ukraine at its current level, it would be sufficient if the countries of 'Greater Europe' and Canada provided assistance amounting to 0.37% of their GDP per year. This is a modest amount by historical standards and relative to the scale of European economies. The main obstacles are political: the instability of support for Ukraine, rising social discontent, and the growing success of far-right parties in Europe. While military operations in northern Donbas have brought almost no territorial gains for Russian forces, the impact of the war in Ukraine on Europe’s political landscape appears highly favourable and promising for the Kremlin.

Has military aid to Ukraine decreased?

After the Trump administration halted military aid to Ukraine in early 2025, other allies of Kyiv, primarily European countries, successfully compensated for the lost volumes and even increased the overall level of support (→ Re:Russia: Shifting The Burden). According to the Ukraine Support Tracker from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, total assistance to Ukraine between January and August 2025 amounted to €57.8 billion, compared with €52 billion over the same period last year. This sum consists almost equally of financial aid, enabling Ukraine to cover its budget deficit and sustain its economy, and direct military assistance (the third category, humanitarian aid, accounts for about 5%). In terms of financial assistance, Kyiv has received only €27.7 billion of the approximately €50 billion needed for the year in eight months, but this a better performance than last year’s €22.7 billion over the same period

Chart 1. Dynamics of all types of assistance provided to Ukraine in 2024–2025, billion euros

In July and August, the overall volume of aid remained quite high. Over those two months alone, Kyiv received €7.5 billion in support from the EU, and the overall inflow dynamics were consistent with the figures of previous years and the first half of the current one, noted Christoph Trebesch, head of the Ukraine Support Tracker project. Total support for Kyiv (including military, financial, and humanitarian aid) amounted to €4.18 billion in July and €7.83 billion in August. In other words, average monthly aid stood at around €6 billion, which is only 20% lower than the average monthly volume in the first half of the year. From January to June 2025, Ukraine received a total of €45.8 billion, or about €7.6 billion per month. At the same time, the financial and humanitarian components of aid in July–August remained stable, averaging €3.4 billion and €0.3 billion per month, respectively. The military component, however, dropped sharply, from €3.3 billion to €2.2 billion per month.

Ukraine Support Tracker sounded the alarm about the decline in military aid to Ukraine in its press release on 14 August, a story that was widely reported by leading international and Ukrainian media outlets. However, the concern appears somewhat overstated. At this stage, it is difficult to determine the reasons behind this development, admitted Taro Nishikawa, one of the authors of the Kiel Institute study, in a conversation with Re: Russia. Fluctuations in the volume of military aid may be caused by various factors, including donor countries’ budget cycles or other procedural considerations. Indeed, there is currently no indication that this dip represents a new trend. In the first half of 2024, the average monthly military aid to Kyiv amounted to €3.49 billion, compared to €3.33 billion in the first eight months of last year and €3.39 billion per month for the whole year. In the first six months of 2025, major contributions were made by the United Kingdom and France in March (€5 billion combined), Germany in May (€4.6 billion), and Norway in June (€1.5 billion). As a result, the average monthly military aid for the first half of the year reached €3.94 billion. By the end of August, this figure had declined to €3.51 billion, which is still higher than last year’s average. In August, aid totalled €3.4 billion.

Chart 2. Military aid to Ukraine, monthly dynamics and six-month average, 2023–2025, billion euros

Although there are no clear indications of weakened support and fluctuations in funding remain within the range of previous variations, a worrying sign may be the slight decline in the volume of committed, i.e. promised, aid. The Ukraine Support Tracker records both aid that has already been disbursed and that which Ukraine’s allies have promised to provide over a certain period. From January to August 2024, the volume of committed aid totalled €53.8 billion, whereas over the same period this year it amounted to only €39.4 billion, which is a decrease of 27%. The EU summit held on 23–24 October may, however, give new momentum to the approval of additional military assistance. Such commitments are broadly reflected in the document adopted following the summit.

In addition, it should be noted that the current strategy for supporting Ukraine places increasing emphasis on developing the country’s own defence production. This means that part of the financial aid is, in practice, military in nature. The Ukrainian authorities are actively seeking to expand precisely this form of defence cooperation, so some reallocation of aid volumes between these categories may occur in the near future.

Two Europes: who is actually financing aid to Ukraine?

At the same time, an indirect indicator of the fragility of support and the weakness of the European coalition is the highly uneven distribution within Europe of spending on military and financial aid to Kyiv. In effect, only twelve countries have provided and continue to provide military assistance to Ukraine, accounting for roughly 95% of the total. At the same time, as can be seen from Table 1, the burden of replacing American support in 2025 was effectively taken on by Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Canada, which together covered nearly €10 billion of the €12 billion shortfall in military aid left by the United States’ withdrawal.

Table 1. Amount of military aid to Ukraine provided by key donor countries, January-August 2023, 2024 and 2025, billion euros

	2023	2024	2025	Share of total volume in 2025, %
USA	20.7	12.4	0.5
Germany	3.4	2.4	6.8	24
UK	2.6	1.8	4.9	18
Sweden	1.3	1.8	2.9	39
Norway	0.2	0.8	2.3
Netherlands	1.7	1.7	2.0
Denmark	1.5	2.0	1.8
Belgium	0.2	1.3	1.4
Finland	1.1	0.6	0.5
France	1.8	0.4	2.2	8
Canada	0.2	0.2	1.7	6
Italy	0.7	0.3	0.3	1
Other	2.9	1.0	0.7	3

Source: Kiel Institute

It is also noteworthy that almost a third (31%) of the military assistance provided has come from non-EU countries (the United Kingdom, Norway, and Canada). Nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s military support in 2025 has been provided by Germany (over €4.9 billion in the first half of the year), and almost 20% by the United Kingdom. The share of the wealthy Northern European countries – Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Finland – has remained consistently high; together they account for around 40% of Europe’s military support to Ukraine in 2025.

At the same time, France’s contribution remains strikingly modest, particularly in light of its geopolitical ambitions and its aspirations to lead the 'coalition of the willing'. Since the beginning of the war, Paris has provided Kyiv with only €5.6 billion in military aid, which is significantly less than, for instance, Sweden (€7.1 billion), despite France’s GDP being five times larger. In 2025, France has allocated €2.2 billion to Ukraine, which remains less than the contributions of Norway and Sweden, three times less than Germany’s, and more than twice less than the UK’s. Italy and Spain have contributed virtually nothing to Ukraine’s military support, having together invested only €2.5 billion since the start of the war. This is less than Belgium, whose GDP is six times smaller than their combined economies. Even after the United States’ withdrawal, Italy allocated only €320 million for this purpose, while Madrid has not provided a single cent.

Overall, when analysing the geography of aid to Ukraine, it becomes evident that Europe is effectively divided in two. Northern Europe – the countries surrounding the Baltic and North Seas, plus Iceland and Canada – accounted for €25 billion of the €28 billion total military assistance to Ukraine in 2025 (90%). This distribution has remained consistent. The first group, comprising fifteen countries, has collectively spent $119 billion on supporting Ukraine (of all types) since the beginning of the war, which is equivalent to 0.75% of their combined 2024 GDP, whereas the seventeen countries of Central and Southern Europe have spent six times less: $19 billion (0.17% of their combined GDP).

Table 2. Total aid to Ukraine provided by the countries of ‘Greater Europe’ and Canada since the start of the conflict

Group 1: Northern Europe	Total aid since January 2022, billion dollars	GDP in 2024, billion dollars	Share of aid in GDP in 2024, %	Group 2: Central and Southern Europe	Total aid since January 2022, billion dollars	GDP in 2024, billion dollars	Share of aid in GDP in 2024, %
Denmark	11.7	429	2.72	Slovakia	0.81	142	0.57
Estonia	1.0	42.76	2.44	Croatia	0.39	92.53	0.42
Lithuania	1.5	84.87	1.72	Luxembourg	0.34	93.2	0.37
Latvia	0.7	43.52	1.68	France	8.61	3050	0.28
Norway	7.9	484	1.63	Bulgaria	0.27	112	0.24
Sweden	9.0	610	1.48	Austria	0.94	522	0.18
Finland	3.7	300	1.24	Romania	0.56	383	0.15
Netherlands	10.9	1228	0.89	Slovenia	0.10	72.49	0.14
Canada	15.2	2240	0.68	Czech Republic	0.45	345	0.13
Poland	5.7	915	0.63	Switzerland	1.18	937	0.13
Belgium	3.9	665	0.59	Portugal	0.37	309	0.12
UK	21.2	3640	0.58	Italy	3.06	2610	0.12
Germany	25.6	4430	0.58	Spain	1.67	1610	0.10
Iceland	0.1	33.46	0.25	Greece	0.17	257	0.07
Ireland	0.3	577	0.06	Hungary	0.06	223	0.03
				Malte	0.00	24.32	0.01
				Cyprus	0.00	36.33	0.01
Total for the group of countries	118.6	15723	0.75		18.99	10819	0.18

Source: Kiel Institute

As we have previously noted, the current level of aid to Ukraine, at $100 billion per year, amounts to 0.37% of the combined GDP of the ‘Greater Europe’ coalition (excluding the United States). However, the uneven distribution of this aid makes the burden much heavier for the leading group of countries, for whom it amounts to between 1% and almost 3% of GDP. Even so, this amount (considering that it covers the entire period of the war) is modest by historical standards. According to Ukraine Support Tracker estimates, during World War II, the US provided Britain with aid amounting to 3.16% of GDP annually (!), and the USSR with aid amounting to 1.4% of GDP through the Lend-Lease programme.

The second front of the war of attrition

Although there is currently no evidence of a reduction in ongoing aid to Ukraine, the situation is likely to become more difficult in the near future. Following Donald Trump’s return to power and the subsequent suspension of American aid, the stabilisation of support for Ukraine has been maintained through the ERA (Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration) mechanism – a loan provided to Kyiv by its allies and secured by revenues from frozen Russian assets. Agreed upon by G7 leaders in 2024, this €45 billion loan plays a crucial role in sustaining Ukraine’s stability and is to be fully disbursed by the end of 2027. However, most of this amount has already been allocated or transferred to Kyiv.

This year’s funding needs are fully covered by the ERA mechanism, yet, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance, the country still needs to find $18 billion to cover part of its 2026 budget deficit, Reuters recently reported. And over the next two years, Ukraine's budget financing needs will amount to $65 billion, according to IMF estimates accepted by the Ukrainian government. The 2026 defence budget is projected to reach $120 billion, of which $60 billion is expected to come from foreign military assistance, said Roksolana Pidlasa, chair of the Rada's budget committee. All of this means that the financial burden on Ukraine’s allies next year will once again need to total at least $100–110 billion.

A systemic solution to this challenge in the coming years could be the use of frozen Russian Central Bank reserves to provide a reparations-based loan to Kyiv. At the same time, according to the European Commission's plan outlined in September this year, the funds would not be confiscated from Euroclear, where they are currently held, but rather structured as a loan guaranteed by a group of countries. In this case, the frozen Russian assets (around €180 billion) would be used to repay the existing ERA loan and to provide Ukraine with additional financing of roughly €135 billion. Euroclear would later be reimbursed from reparations that Russia would be compelled to pay. The strength of this scheme lies in the fact that it does not constitute a legal confiscation; its weakness is the uncertainty over who will bear responsibility for the debt to Euroclear and in what form. Since late September, several European leaders, including Friedrich Merz, have strongly supported the plan(→ Re:Russia: Risks or Money).

However, after several rounds of talks, including at the EU summit on 23 October, no agreement has been reached. Belgium, where Euroclear is located, insists on guarantees from all 27 EU member states, which would collectively bear responsibility for the loan. This is intended to prevent a situation in which individual EU countries might later support the unfreezing of Russian assets. Such concerns have grown in recent weeks following the victory of right-wing populist Andrej Babiš in the Czech elections on 3–4 October. His win raises the prospect of a new 'Visegrad Group' within the EU (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary) whose views on Russia would differ sharply from those of Brussels. Politico claims that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán intends to create an anti-Ukrainian faction in the EU. The issue is being actively discussed by European policy experts; however, as noted in an article on the Visegrad Insight platform, it may not be easy for Babiš to join such a coalition, given that pro-Russian sentiment in Czechia is far less widespread than in Hungary, where it is limited to roughly a quarter of the population.

A final decision on the question of Russian assets has been postponed until December. As an alternative 'Plan B', EU leaders have floated the idea of joint borrowing by all European countries to finance Ukraine. However, this is seen more as a diplomatic deterrent: such a proposal is even less popular, both among the so-called 'frugal' countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, which seek to limit their debt, and among poorer member states, which already have high debt levels and therefore fear further increases, writes Politico.

Such collective obligations would, in themselves, serve as a strong incentive for European countries to maintain firm demands on Russia to pay reparations after the war, according to a commentary by the Bruegel Institute. The idea of broadening the coalition of countries joining the plan to use Russian assets as advance reparations now appears to be a lifeline for an increasingly divided European Union. 'The strength of the scheme must rest on the fact that everyone who holds Russian assets does the same', said European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. The broader the coalition, the greater the likelihood that Russia will eventually agree to pay reparations (encouraged, perhaps, by the prospect of sanctions being lifted). The United Kingdom and Canada have announced their willingness to join the plan, Bloomberg reported. Washington is not yet ready, the same agency claims, citing its sources, although in September US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged European officials to use frozen Russian assets. Tokyo, too, has been hesitant to align itself with Europe. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, explaining his cautious position, cited the example of Japan, which has frozen around €50 billion in Russian Central Bank assets but has already ruled out the possibility of using those funds to assist Ukraine.

Europe managed to finance Ukraine and sustain its confrontation with Russia through the first year without American participation. Yet the continuation of the war, and the challenge of arming and rebuilding Ukraine after the active phase of hostilities, is becoming an increasingly serious problem for European leaders. Not so much from an economic standpoint as from a political one, against the backdrop of growing public dissatisfaction with socio-economic conditions and the advance of right-wing forces across Europe. While on the battlefield in northern Donbas the situation looks increasingly like a military stalemate for the Kremlin – exposing Russia’s inability to advance or fully exploit its advantage in manpower and resources – Vladimir Putin’s hopes now seem ever more closely tied to growing instability and political polarisation within Europe. The ongoing conflict deepens the continent’s financial burden and widens the fractures in European politics.