The Kiel Institute has been tracking support for Ukraine since the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Its latest update reveals the holes that European nations are leaving in Kyiv’s finances.
In a report earlier this month, Kiel analysts said new aid allocations in 2025 might drop to their lowest level since the outbreak of the war in 2022, and were on track to fall far short of what is needed to plug the gap left by America’s withdrawal.
At the same time, the split in contributions between European countries widened. While France and Germany and the U.K. significantly boosted their contributions to Ukraine, Nordic countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark remained far ahead in terms of the percentages of GDP they spend.
Italy and Spain, however, “contributed very little,” the Kiel Institute said. That same dynamic was on display in the run-up to the summit. Southern EU countries joined Belgium in opposing the reparations loan plan, while Germany and the Nordics pushed hard for it to go through.
Under the terms of the final summit deal, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia won’t contribute to the funding plan to Ukraine at all. An EU of 27 member states turned into a gang of 24.
Arguably, it didn’t need to be so messy.