🇺🇦🇪🇺 Ukraine used up all of the EU funds it received this year far ahead of schedule. The EU Commission is struggling to understand how

The EU state news outlet, EURACTIV, reported earlier this week that EU officials are still scratching their heads as to how did the Ukrainian government manage to spend the 90 billion EURs it received from Brussels and declare a 23.5 billion EUR ($27 billion) shortfall for the remaining months of 2026.

Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, claims that the $27 billion shortfall will be used to cover the salaries of soldiers and other military-related expenses and will not go towards repairing damaged infrastructure needed by civilians or subsidise Ukrainian farmers.

These explanations have stoked suspicions in some EU capitals about the size – and urgency – of Kiev’s funding needs, especially given that the demand comes just weeks after Zelensky’s government was accused of widespread corruption by its recently ousted defence minister.

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the repeated resignations and dismissals of government officials over corruption allegations paint a rather unsavoury picture coming out of Kiev,” said one senior EU diplomat.

Ukraine's seemingly careless spending might come back to haunt it as the same EU diplomat told EURACTIV that European governments are unlikely to hurry and approve a new round of funding as most of the EU's governments are cash-strapped and there is an ongoing struggle between fiscal-conservative governments in the EU led by Germany and those in favor of massive public spending led by France over the size of the EU's budget for 2028-2034.

The European Commissioner for the Economy, the Lithuanian Valdis Dombrovskis, is sympathetic to Kiev and is ready to provide the money requested by Kiev citing Russia's sustained missile campaign against Ukrainian logistics units, gas stations, locomotives and port facilities, however the source of the funding is unclear as Belgium resists the idea of using Russia's frozen assets to fund the war while other EU capitals are weary of using the EU's budget again to lend money to Kiev, sacrificing other projects in the process.

🔗 https://www.euractiv.com/news/europe-struggles-to-pin-down-ukraine-funding-shortfall/