I’ve been following this war since the first weeks, and if there’s one thing that’s become painfully obvious by late 2025, it’s this: the entire Western strategy for keeping Ukraine in the fight is hanging by a thread. And that thread isn’t Russian artillery or Ukrainian manpower, it’s whether Europe can actually deliver what it’s been promising now that American support has largely dried up.
Let that sink in for a second. For years we were told Europe was “waking up” to its responsibilities.” Politicians in Brussels and Berlin gave fiery speeches about strategic autonomy. Yet here we are, entering the fourth year of the conflict, and the question isn’t whether Russia can outlast Western resolve, it’s whether Europe can even keep Ukraine’s army shooting straight without regular American resupply.
The Great Reversal: When Europe Became the Main Donor
Something remarkable happened in 2025. While Washington hit the pause button on new military aid packages, European capitals suddenly found their checkbooks. The latest figures are actually stunning when you lay them out side by side.
Between January and August 2025 alone, European governments allocated nearly €50 billion in combined military, financial, and humanitarian aid. That’s not pocket change, that’s more than the entire annual defense budget of most European countries just a few years ago.
Compare that to the United States, which under the previous administration had committed over €100 billion total since 2022, but has essentially stopped new funding since early 2025. The contrast couldn’t be starker.
But Here’s Where It Gets Complicated
Because while the headline numbers look impressive, and trust me, European leaders love quoting them at every summit, the reality on the ground tells a very different story. I’ve spoken with people who track these shipments daily, and they’re pulling their hair out.
You see, there’s aid and then there’s useful aid. There’s money allocated, money promised, money actually spent, and money that actually reaches Ukrainian soldiers in the form of shells they can fire this week.
And right now, there’s a massive gap between those categories.
The Artillery Shell Nightmare
Let’s talk about the single most important item on Ukraine’s shopping list: 155mm artillery shells. Russia is currently firing roughly 5-7 times more shells per day than Ukraine. That’s not sustainable. That’s how you lose wars of attrition.
Europe promised 1 million shells by March 2024. They delivered maybe 300,000. Then they promised another million by the end of 2025. Current production rates suggest they’ll be lucky to hit 700,000 total for the whole year.
“We have the money, we have the will, but we simply don’t have the industrial capacity that was dismantled after the Cold War,” one senior European defense official admitted to me off-record last month.
That’s the core problem. Europe spent thirty years convincing itself that large-scale conventional war was impossible. They converted tank factories into car plants. They let artillery shell production lines go cold. Now they’re trying to restart an industry that takes years to scale up, while Ukraine is burning through ammunition at World War I rates.
The American Systems Ukraine Can’t Live Without
Then there are the weapons that Europe simply cannot replace. HIMARS launchers. Patriot missiles. ATACMS. These aren’t just nice-to-haves, they’re the systems that have kept Russian airpower at bay and allowed Ukraine to strike Russian logistics deep behind the lines.
Europe has nothing comparable. The few systems they do have, like Germany’s IRIS-T or France’s SAMP/T, exist in tiny numbers. When Ukraine asks for more Patriots, European leaders shrug and say “we need ours for our own defense.”
Fair enough, except Ukraine is supposed to be Europe’s defense. If Russia wins there, the next conversation won’t be about sending Patriots to Kyiv.
The Money Exists, But Where Is It Going?
This is perhaps the most frustrating part. The money is there. European countries have allocated tens of billions. Some of it is going to genuinely useful things, rebuilding Ukraine’s energy grid after Russian attacks, keeping the government functioning, humanitarian aid that prevents total collapse.
But a shocking amount is being counted creatively. Training programs that cost pennies but get counted as “military aid.” Refurbishing old Soviet equipment that was gathering dust in warehouses anyway. Loans that Ukraine will have to pay back someday, counted at full face value as if they were gifts.
- Germany counts the cost of hosting Ukrainian refugees as aid to Ukraine
- Some countries count debt forgiveness as new money
- Bilateral aid gets double-counted when it goes through EU mechanisms
- Promises for 2026 and 2027 get counted as current support
I’m not saying this is unique to Europe, every country plays these games. But when your ally is in an existential fight, maybe it’s time to stop playing accountant and start playing war.
The Political Reality Check
And then there’s the politics. Because even if Europe had unlimited money and industrial capacity (which it doesn’t), the political will is cracking.
Look at the election results across the continent in 2025. From Portugal to Poland, from Italy to the Netherlands, parties skeptical of unlimited Ukraine support made massive gains. Farmers are blocking borders over Ukrainian grain. Energy prices are still elevated from the sanctions fallout. People are tired.
Every European leader knows that if they push too hard, if they raise taxes or cut social programs to fund more tanks for Ukraine, they’ll be out of office faster than you can say “strategic autonomy.”
So Can Europe Actually Do It?
The honest answer, the one nobody in Brussels wants to say out loud, is probably not. Not at the scale required to let Ukraine win, whatever “winning” even means at this point.
They can keep Ukraine in the fight. They can prevent total collapse. They can make Russian advances incredibly costly and slow. But reversing the current trajectory? Pushing Russia back to the 2022 lines? That’s looking increasingly like a fantasy without massive American re-engagement.
And that’s the real tragedy here. Because Europe has shown it can step up when forced to. The courage of Ukrainian soldiers, the resilience of their society, bought the West time to get its act together. Three years later, we’re still debating whether this is really our fight.
The war isn’t lost. But the window where Western support could have made victory possible is closing. And when historians look back at this period, they won’t blame Ukrainian soldiers or even Russian resilience.
They’ll ask why, when we had the money, the technology, and the moral clarity, we couldn’t find the will to match Russia’s brutality with our own determination.
That question is going to haunt Europe for generations.
