It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Today we go into the fifth year of the Ukraine war which has now been going on longer than the Second World War ( 3 years and 11 months).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy just gave an address to the European Parliament this morning thanking them for their ongoing support and calling for that support to continue for the protection of Europe's ideals and its democracy. He got a standing ovation and there's no doubt that Europe wants to see him triumph. However, today it's appropriate to look back and reflect on what's been done so far. And what jumps out at me is the support has been sufficient to keep Ukraine in the battle to everyone's surprise. Despite its size and power Russia has only managed to capture just under 20% of Ukrainian territory. However, the prospect of a military victory remains as far away as ever by design and some collosal blunders have been made that has left tens of thousands of brave soldiers dead in the muddy wheat fields of the Donbas.
The EU is supposed to be debating the passage of the 20th package of sanctions on Russia but as we reported it is in total disarray. Coupled to that is major mistakes that have been made of which the biggest was for the EU to continue to pay Russia for its oil and gas imports in the first year of the war. That handed Russia hundreds of billions of euros it desperately needed in order to prevent its economy from collapsing.
Contrast that with the rhetoric of the last few days about tightening the sanctions and focusing on the oil revenue on the assumption if Europe can only do a little bit more than the Putin regime will fold giving Ukraine a victory.
Running through the policy throughout the last four years and Europe in particular has been compromised between its desire to see Ukraine defeat Russia and catering to his own self interests. Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than the decision to pay Russia for energy in 2022 when prices spiked. Brussels should have either refused to pay and faced an energy crisis of its own or at least put the money in an escrow account that would be released at the end of the war. Now it’s too late. Russia has remade its energy logistics and has replaced European customers with new ones in Asia.
A country that has both low debt (20% of GDP or around $300bn) and runs a current account surplus is almost impossible to sanction as it doesn’t need to tap the global financial system. Russia has been able to almost entirely fund its war using just internal resources. And in 2022, thanks to the energy crisis, it made twice as much money as in any year since 1991 – some $225bn. Ukraine, by contrast, depends on external funding for half its budget, a key vulnerability as the touch-and-go debate over the Reparation Loan in December and the uncertain status of a new IMF programme show.
The same is true of the sanctions regime which is riddled with exceptions and carve outs, Today the glaring example is Greece and Malta's refusal to approve the 20th sanctions package to protect European business interests, which would ban them from carrying Russian oil. The fact that EU flagged and regulated tankers are a core part of the shadow fleet is truly shocking and highlights the double standards that have left Ukraine in an impossible position. Hungary and Slovakia are also not playing ball, by threatening to cut off power exports to Ukraine unless it turns their supplies of Russian oil and gas on again.
Of course, Zelenskiy can't complain because he needs that support, otherwise he would have faced defeat within weeks but at the same time I'm amazed that he hasn't lost his temper and called Europe out for its hypocrisy.
The military support has also been marred by similar self-serving blunders. Following the astonishingly successful Kharkiv offensive in 2022 when the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) smashed through Russian lines and took back hundreds of square kilometres of territory, the West dithered for a year before resupplying them giving Russia ample time to build extensive defences that rebuffed the 2023 summer offensive and resulted in stalemate from which the AFU has never recovered. This was a result of the West’s “escalation management” strategy which boils down to “some, but not enough” support to ensure the AFU do not lose the war, but are not given enough support to actually win.
The standard Western military strategy is “shock and awe” – go in with overwhelming force to ensure a short war with minimum casualties. The combined US death toll in the Afghan, Iraq and Libyan wars was a little more than 7,000 men, despite having a combined duration of 40 years – ten times the duration of WWII. The policies adopted to support Ukraine appear to be diametrically opposite: prolong the war as long as possible and maximise the casualty rate, not minimise it.
All of this has contributed to the decline of Europe, as detailed in the Draghi report, as its value-based system has been shown up as being little more than a veneer for Europe’s mercantile interest in maintaining its economic prosperity and protecting its own markets. Now in the face of adversity and accelerating deindustrialisation it is increasingly in crisis. The chronic lack of investments into both defence and innovation has led to it falling further and further behind both the US and China – a process catalysed by the enormous drain in resources from supporting Ukraine.
Where does Ukraine stand in this? Zelenskiy again just asked the parliament to set a concrete date for Ukraine's accession to the EU. Trump has suggested 2027 and as I have said repeatedly despite Europe's problems, from Ukraine's perspective nothing could be better. Every country that has joined the EU since 2003 has flourished.
Russia's economy in the “death zone”
Predictably as the anniversary passes there's been a round of pieces highlighting the economic problems that Russia faces. Alexandra Prokopenko, a political economy analyst, hit a home run with her Economist column about Russia entering the “death zone” where despite the fact she admits there is no crisis around the corner she argues that Russia is consuming resources faster than it can produce them and will eventually die, like a mountaineer trapped above 8,000m.
There's been a whole raft of these articles, and they all make valid points. Russia's economy is hurting but pointedly there's been no parallel pieces about the state of the Ukrainian economy. bne IntelliNews published a side-by-side comparison of the Ukrainian and Russian budgets last September and more recently how the Ukrainian economy is starting to shut down due to the lack of power and resources.
Ukraine's economy looks in far worse shape than Russia's. Another detail that's being skipped over is the IMF program worth about $8bn has not been approved yet and if it fails to pass then Ukraine still faces a macroeconomic collapse in April.
This war needs to stop. The talks in Geneva which resumed this week need to come to a conclusion. That can only be done with a face-to-face meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin which happily has been proposed to happen in Geneva and will need to happen before mid-May when Trump's deadlines for both a referendum and presidential election come up.
There is no guarantee of a deal. If the talks fail, thanks to the €90bn EU loan, Zelenskiy has the option of fighting on for another two years. But as I pointed out before that would only exacerbate what already is the worst demographic crisis in the world and jeopardise Ukraine’s long-term recovery.
All the talk of Russia’s looming economic collapse if only it can be cut off from its oil revenues is another mistake made by EU policy makers. They are focusing on the wrong tax.
While energy exports were key to the Russian economy at the start of the war, that is no longer true. The reality is that some 80% of Russian budget revenue is now earned from non-oil and gas exports with VAT accounting for half of that. The sales tax the government earns from every bottle of vodka sold in a Moscow kiosk earns it more money than each barrel of Urals blend shipped to India. And of course you can’t sanction vodka bottle sales.
The two-percentage point hike to the VAT rate in January bringing it to a still pretty pedestrian 22% rate will go a long way to funding the expected budget deficit this year.
“Energy exports have supported tax revenues, limiting the size of the federal budget deficit and the need for even larger tax increases to sustain the war effort. Russia’s total exports are still running at more than $450bn per year,” Liam Peach, the senior emerging market economist with Capital Economics said in a paper today.
Four years on and oil revenues are falling and that does cause pain however the Ministry of Finance has had plenty of time to readjust and has put through root and branch reforms in order to improve tax revenues. Before the war, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin implemented what can only be described as a revolution at the tax service. The tax burden has only gone up by 2% but the tax take has expanded a whopping 20%. Few are talking about the root and branch reforms to improve budget spending efficiency and the drive to stamp out the corruption and schemes that plagued the service pre-war. Russia's economy has become far more resilient than most commentators are prepared to admit.
That's not to say sanctions have not done their damage - they have. Nevertheless, thanks to the liquidity in the banking sector the Kremlin has been able to fund its budget purely from domestic borrowing.
"The key issue in our view is that sanctions have not sufficiently targeted the core of Russia’s economy: its energy sector. Nonetheless, sanctions have reduced Russia’s access to advanced technology and weighed on its potential growth,” says Peach.
So, the twentieth sanctions package plan to just tighten sanctions a little more in order to hit the oil revenues is becoming increasingly irrelevant as each year passes. The Kremlin is less and less reliant on oil revenue to pay for anything and the Ministry of Finance (MinFin) itself is planning to adjust the budget, so the country runs with oil and gas revenues contributing only 15% of total revenues.
Another way of looking at just how big a problem the falling oil and gas revenues are is to look at the non-oil and gas deficit – the deficit the budget would actually have if you magically made all the hydrocarbons disappear.
Russia’s non-oil and gas federal budget deficit has widened markedly since the invasion of Ukraine and is now running at roughly 7–8% of GDP in 2024–2025. Before the war, the gap was significantly smaller, averaging around 4–5% of GDP between 2019 and 2021. In other words, the Kremlin used the oil revenues to subsidies the economy which is why taxes are so low and the economy boomed in the noughties.
However, even 8% of GDP is not excessive. The NOGD’s historical peak was reached during Great Financial Crisis, when the non-oil deficit ballooned to approximately 13–14% of GDP in 2009 following the collapse in oil prices and aggressive counter-cyclical spending. In other words, the US sub-prime financial crisis cost Russia a lot more money than the war in Ukraine has done. Likewise, the 2020 pandemic saw the NOGD blow out to 9% of GDP, which was also more expensive than the Ukraine war.
Another point gleefully reported is the end of the military Keynesianism boost. GDP growth accelerated to 4-5% p.a. over 2023-24, driven in large part by the war effort. The economy is now 8% larger than it was in 2021. By comparison, Ukraine’s economy shrank by 21% in 2025 as its own military Keynesianism effect wore off.
Russia’s military spending fuelled expansion phase is exhausted and the economy has moved into a period of stagnation, according to CBR governor Elvia Nabiullina. Household incomes and consumption are still growing strongly, but that will soon change and investment is already contracting outright, according to Capital Economics. A period of GDP growth at or below 1.0% lies ahead.
But the commentary misses that this recession was induced by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) on purpose. Nabiullina stamped on credits and growth in an unorthodox experiment to bring down sticky inflation of over 10%.
She has been trying to soft land a Russian cargo plane where the throttle of military spending is stuck on full. She decided to do that by landing the plane without putting the landing gear down. It was always going to be messy. But so far, it's working. Last year inflation fell faster than expected allowing the CBR to put through 500bp of rate cuts adding another surprise 50bp in February. From a monetary policy point of view, Russia’s economy has already passed its nadir. The race is now on between the rate of the fall in inflation and cutting the central bank’s policy rate in order to reboot growth. But if Nabiullina gets it wrong then recession or even stagnation looms.
Quality of life
Another point missed by most commentators is that the last four years have been amongst the most prosperous and pleasant for most Russians since 1991. A new war middle class emerged, while studies found that Russia’s poorest regions have been the biggest winners from the war, partially undoing the massive inequality.
Since Putin launched the modernisation of the military in 2012 the Kremlin has in effect been running an austerity budget. Real incomes have stagnated since 2014 despite the massive accumulation of reserves thanks to booming oil exports. That all changed in 2022 when the Kremlin turned on the spending spigots and poured its accumulated cash into the economy in a reversal of Putinomics. Real incomes soared leading to a consumption boom that is only just starting to stall. But with unemployment at an all-time low of 2.2%, everyone has a job, is getting paid, and are largely insulated from the war in the south.
The pain of the war is finally starting to make itself felt on the streets of Russia’s millionkii as the central bank-induced-recession makes itself felt, but even this pain is mild.
"The more striking feature of the war economy has been the strength of Russian household spending. Since 2021, real GDP has risen by 8%, while private consumption has risen by 17% and households’ real disposable incomes are up by 30%. This ended the long period of stagnation in households’ real incomes that took hold from 2014,” says Peach.
Vulnerabilities
In addition to the kinetic war in Ukraine, there is an economic war raging between Russia, Ukraine and the West, but here Russia clearly has the advantage for now. But that is not to say Russia faces no risks.
The central bank itself has identified banking credit risk as the primary macroeconomic threat facing the economy. Russia’s banks have become the shock absorber of the war economy – funding corporates, absorbing sovereign issuance and intermediating state-directed capital – and are therefore key for macro stability.
As the economy slows, credits are starting to go bad and the sky high interest rates are bleeding companies of cash, as Vedomosti reported in an article on Russia’s13 drowning men. Overall, non-performing loans (NPLs) remain at acceptable levels, but long-term bad debt could turn into a serious problem, undermining the stability of the banking sector. Nabiullina has already ordered the banks to recapitalise in preparation of problems.
The next vulnerability is fiscal. Energy tax revenues declined by 24% last year (taking them from 5.5% of GDP in 2024 to 4.0%). This reflects lower energy prices and a stronger (which reduces the local-currency value of receipts). Meanwhile, spending remained elevated due to the war effort.
As mentioned above, the government has sufficient revenues to pay for the war for now, but as it is relying heavily on domestic OFZ treasury bond issues to finance the war, the cost of the coupon payments is starting to become uncomfortably high.
“The biggest issue is financing cost and crowding out. If Russia continues to issue debt at this pace, it will become increasingly difficult for banks to absorb this supply without the government facing prohibitively high debt servicing costs,” says Peach.
By Capital Economics estimates, each 5% fall in energy tax revenues relative to 2025 will widen the budget deficit by 0.2-0.3% of GDP. A reasonable baseline is that energy tax revenues fall further by around 20% this year, taking energy revenues down to 3.2% of GDP and adding a percentage point to the deficit which will have to be covered by additional OFZ issues. Still, this is a slow moving train wreck and Russia still has sufficient buffers to soldier on for at least two years, according to the experts.
"Will economic pressure end the war? We don’t think so, largely because Russia’s economy is not yet at the pain thresholds that would likely force President Putin to change tack,” says Peach.
English: Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft), Nestor Makhno and others of the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad (the "Delo ...
Four years of war leave Russia stagnating and Ukraine exhausted
Four years on, resilience gives way to exhaustion on both sides of the front. / bne IntelliNews
The war in Ukraine started exactly four years ago today. The Kremlin was hoping for a blitzkrieg victory but the heroic resistance by the local forces caught the Russian forces and Ukraine’s Western allies unawares. Four years on and Ukraine remains locked in a grinding war of attrition, but shows no sign of giving up yet and is prepared to fight on, if the current peace talks fail.
But Russia was surprised too. Its economy has proved far more resilient than many expected and defied the most extreme sanctions regime in history. However, it is now entering a period of prolonged stagnation marked by rising financial vulnerabilities and growing isolation, according to Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist with Capital Economics.
“Russia’s economy has proven remarkably resilient since the war in Ukraine began four years ago, underpinned by military-related stimulus, an ability to adapt to Western sanctions and disciplined macroeconomic policy,” he said. “However, we think Russia has now entered a period of prolonged stagnation accompanied by rising financial vulnerabilities.”
Military Keynesianism exhausted
Gross domestic product growth accelerated to 4-5% per annum in 2023-24, leaving the economy 8% larger than in 2021. That expansion was driven by fiscal stimulus concentrated in the military, a credit boom supported by state-directed lending and an extremely tight labour market, the so-called military Keynesianism effects. But that model has exhausted itself. The entire economy has been put on a war footing and military production is now in surplus producing more arms than are needed on the battlefield. But that has come at the cost of a twin speed economy where the civilian part is starved of resources. A central bank induced slowdown to bring down sticky inflation has worked too well: economic growth will be next to nothing this year and only slowly recover in the next year – maybe.
“That expansion phase is over and the economy has moved into a period of stagnation,” Peach said, forecasting growth at or below 1.0%.
Russia’s economy is hurting, but it is not going to collapse, according to Alexandra Prokopenko, a political economy analyst, writing recently in The Economist, but it structural problems means it is now in what she calls the “death zone”, like a mountain climber trapped at the top of a peak, where there are not enough resources so the economy is eating itself from inside. Nevertheless, she admits this is a long slow process.
Much has been made of the 2.8% of GDP budget deficit last year – high by Russian standards – and a similarly large, or larger deficit expected this year. Still, that is less than the EU’s excessive deficit mechanism trigger of 3% of GDP – a level that France, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Hungary and Slovakia are currently all in breach of. The UK and France are both approaching the need to ask for a Greek-crisis-like IMF bailout as debt and interest rate payments are becoming so large. The French government has become dysfunctional, unable to bring a 5.5% of GDP deficit down and the UK public finances have been likened to “a ponzi scheme” by Liam Halligan, the lead economics columnist at the Daily Telegraph.
Russia is also seeing its share of interest payments in government expenditure rise alarmingly, but there is still some RUB20 trillion ($220bn) in liquidity in the banking sector the Kremlin can tap. And that is before it starts to raise taxes; on January 1 VAT went up two percentage points, the first tax hike during the war, which alone counts for 40% of government revenues, compared to 25% it earns from the minerals (oil) extraction tax. All said and done, while the Russian economy is clearly stressed, President Vladimir Putin can afford to fund the war for several more years if he chooses.
Ukraine’s economy is worse
By comparison the Ukrainian economy is in far worse shape. It's running a budget deficit of some $50bn a year, or 21% of GDP, all of which is supplied by foreign donors who stopped since the start of last year. The US has sent no money at all and used to account for 40% of Ukraine's financial aid. The US has also cut off direct military aid that is all provided by Europe via the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) programme, but as bne IntelliNews reported, since this system was launched, Europe has failed to offset the end of US military aid and is struggling to fund its own military modernisation, let alone cover that of Ukraine as well. Having said that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy recently announced that Ukraine now provides 60% of its military needs from its own resources, up from next to nothing at the start of the war – a remarkable feat.
While Ukraine remains entirely dependent on outside assistance, the €90bn EU loan granted in December, together with other monies collected from the G7 and elsewhere, will be enough to keep Ukraine funded for another two years according to a recent paper from Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).
Nevertheless, Ukraine is suffering far worse at Russian hands than the Russian economy is suffering from a sustained attack on Russian refineries that started last autumn.
The sustained missile war that Putin launched last May has escalated and only 20% of the energy sector’s generating capacity is left functioning according to some estimates. By January Ukraine’s economy was starting to shut down due to myriad problems, starting with the lack of power. Businesses from supermarkets to metallurgy are halting commerce and production as they simply don't have the energy to run their shops. The impact of the onslaught estimates show up in the macroeconomic statistics: Ukraine's GDP in 2025 was 21% below pre-war levels. Industrial production was down 2.5% last year after growing 3.6% the year before on the same sort of military Keynesian effects Russia enjoyed, and a chronic manpower shortage is plaguing everything.
Mood blackening
The people have been living in "survival mode" for four years and are giving way to a quiet exhausting desperation, according to CEO of Hope for Ukraine, Yuriy Boyechko. He recently questioned if Ukraine could recover at all if the fighting stopped tomorrow or if Ukraine would remain a EU-dependant, doomed to several decades of decline before reaching its nadir, weighed down by demographic catastrophe, lack of capital and paucity of resources and power.
Boyechko referred to a “'new poor' of teachers, engineers, and small business owners who once lived comfortably but now scan supermarket shelves for the cheapest bread”. He added: “The war hasn't just destroyed factories and power plants; it has liquidated the life savings of an entire generation.”
World Bank predictions of poverty rates soaring to 37% have come to pass and a dream of a stable EU future has been traded for the daily maths of survival: “deciding whether to buy warm boots for a growing child or paying for the fuel needed to run a generator during another blackout,” says Boyechko.
The mood is blackening. With mortality rates running at three times fertility rates, the population is collapsing and Ukraine faces the worst demographic crisis in the world. That is starting to weigh on the public mood. While the polls suggest Ukrainians remain resilient and are prepared to fight on, refusing point blank to give up an occupied territory, the reality is that death and destruction is ever present while European relief is not.
The recent Munich Security Conference brought a fresh round of heroic statements and promises of support, but former presidential press secretary Iulia Mendel caught the mood, posting an ode to the European leaders highlighting the emptiness of the platitudes offered.
Where suits proclaim Ukraine's unbreakable might,
a juggernaut of pure heroic light.
"Russia's crumbling, weak, a has-been bear on knees!" They clap for drones and PowerPoints, ignoring pleas.
While children freeze in basements, blackouts stretch for days,
Mothers bury sons in fields turned endless graves.
The humanitarian cry? A footnote, drowned in cheers
— "Resilient nation!" they toast, wiping dry their tears.
How noble, how detached, this chorus of the grand, Praising strength that bleeds in silence across the land.
Ukraine stands tall, they say, while bodies pile and rot
— But suffering's inconvenient; best left forgot.
Bravo, diplomats, your platitudes shine like gold;
Meanwhile the dying wait for aid that's never told.
The Ukrainians are becoming tired of the rhetorical triumphing of their “resilience” when the words come with the West’s perennial “some, but not enough” assistance that has marred the entire war since 2022.
Mendel’s poem is an echo of the sarcastic tweets the crowd on Maidan square were sending whenever Brussels criticised the Yanukovych administration’s brutality with messages of its “grave concern” while doing nothing concrete to force the exiled president's hand in the face of mass protests.
EU divided
The EU continues to demonstrate its disunity and disarray with the debacle surrounding what should have been a headline twentieth sanctions package targeting Russia’s shadow fleet and cutting the Kremlin off from its oil revenues. Rather than ram the measure through, it has descended into petty squabbling amongst the member states. Greece and Malta have blocked the measures to ban EU ships from working for the shadow fleet as they make too much money. Hungary and Slovakia have threatened to cut off emergency supplies of power to Ukraine unless their deliveries of Russian oil and gas that were halted on January 27 are resumed.
Sanctions have been a failure. They have reshaped but not broken the economy, according to Peach.
“Russia has become more financially isolated and technologically constrained under sanctions since 2022, but it has adapted in important ways,” he said, pointing to a reorientation of trade towards China and India and the development of channels to circumvent restrictions. The main flaw, in his view, is that “sanctions have not sufficiently targeted the core of Russia’s economy: its energy sector”, although they have reduced access to advanced technology and weighed on potential growth.
On fiscal policy, he argued that deficits of 2-3% of GDP are manageable, but “an oil sector shock – through lower prices or reduced export volumes – that widens the deficit beyond 4% could force policymakers to make more difficult decisions”. On this point, Putin must be praying for Trump to launch a new war on Iran, just the threat of which has already pushed oil prices up $10 and would raise them to over $100 a barrel should the rockets start flying.
Despite mounting strains, Peach does not expect economic pressure alone to end the conflict. “Russia’s economy is not yet at the pain thresholds that would likely force President Putin to change tack,” he said, adding that “Putin seems willing to bear heavy economic costs to achieve his goals around issues of Ukraine’s sovereignty, security and territory”. The “most likely outcome is a frozen conflict”.
Demographic catastrophe
Increasingly the fate of the war will depend on demographics. The manpower shortage in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is already acute, with kilometre-long holes appearing in the defences that allowed Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) to simply walk into the frontline town of Pokrovsk at the end of last year.
Commander-in-chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, stated that last year the Russian army's losses surpassed its rate of replenishment for the first time. The Kremlin was able to mobilise about 406,000 people for military service, while total casualties, including killed and wounded, reached approximately 418,000 military personnel, Syrsky said.
Yet despite the horrific figures of more than one million men killed and wounded in the last four years, Russia still has a very deep pool of manpower to draw on. The active military personnel and the armed forces Russia estimated at somewhere around 1.3mn people from a total population of 146mn. That puts the active armed forces at roughly 0.9% of the total population. If reservists are included, then the total number in the Russian army is around 2mn or 1.5% of the whole population although not all of them are on active duty.
Ukraine is fielding the second largest army in Europe – three times larger than that of Turkey – with some 800,000 men under arms out of the total population estimate of around 30mn people. That means the Ukrainian army accounts for between 2.5 and 3% of the total population. However, the pool of military aged men has been depleted after some 7mn people fled the country. Ukraine has been forced to run a mandatory conscription programme since the very start of the war, which is causing a huge amount of resentment amongst the remaining population. Putin continues to run a voluntary system paying enormous sums for men to sign up. While that is slowly running into trouble as the amounts paid keep rising in order to keep the flow of men coming, until recently Russia has been able to recruit enough men to cover its losses on the battlefield.
A Wall Street Journal article on a secret meeting last week claims that Zelinskiy told his top aides to prepare for three more years of war which would need another quarter of a million men to start; however those men are simply not available not even by ratcheting up the mandatory conscription programme. The only way to fill the ranks of this army is if the recruitment age was dropped from 25 years old to 18. Ukraine’s demographics are already horrific with a deep gouge out of the 20 something cohort. To drop the age again would hollow out yet another generation and the country’s future for several generations to come.
Bankova immediately denied the Wall Street Journal report although the European Union's plan has been to provide a €90bn loan specifically to allow Ukraine to fight on for at least two years and two thirds of that money is dedicated to military spending.
Ukrainian refugees in France face uncertainty as emergency protection phased out Four years ago France joined other European countries in welcoming tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war, under a European Union temporary protection scheme. Now this framework is being phased out, leaving the 40,000 Ukrainians still in the country facing an uncertain future.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, France and other European countries moved quickly to organise emergency support for the tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing their country.
While most arrived in the Paris region, many headed south to the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, particularly around Nice, where there was an existing sizeable Ukrainian community.
The AFUCA Ukrainian cultural association in Nice, which was founded in 2016, became a central point of support, helping new arrivals look for work, navigate administrative procedures and fill out paperwork.
Four years on, it continues to help around 100 new arrivals each month, as well as those who are already in France and hoping to stay, such as Karina Youdenkova.
Youdenkova, 23, left Kyiv after an explosion blew in the windows of her flat. Her father was killed on the front.
“I see my life in France. I don’t see a future for myself in Ukraine,” she explains. She is considering enrolling at university.
One major obstacle for her is obtaining a driving licence. She says she was unable to register for the test because she is in France under the temporary protection scheme. She would like to obtain a more stable status so she can continue building her life in France.
First implemented in 2001 following the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, its aim is to "provide immediate and temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons from non-EU countries".
The scheme granted Ukrainians residency and work authorisation, a small living stipend and health coverage.
While many people have since returned to Ukraine, according to the French Interior Ministry there were 40,850 people still living in France under this status at the beginning of 2026.
However, the scheme is due to expire in March 2027, and French authorities have begun winding down services specifically dedicated to Ukrainians.
In Nice, the main hub that that provided temporary accommodation and guidance to new arrivals closed in August 2024. The area's last accommodation programme reserved for Ukrainians shut down at the end of 2025. Ukrainian refugees now must find housing in the same way as any other vulnerable group.
“The only reception now is with us,” says AFUCA founder, Iryna Bourdelles.
Some are eligible for standard residence permits. Others are applying for asylum, which offers more durable protection, but may not be suitable for those who hope to return to Ukraine one day. In 2025, 12,310 Ukrainians applied for asylum in France, according to Ofpra, the French office for the protection of refugees.
Moving away from emergency measures is understandable, says Bourdelles, as the war enters its fifth year. “I’m not saying the state is abandoning us, but Ukraine is no longer among the priorities. And that’s normal, it’s been four years." Complex needs
The transition brings uncertainty for those still in France, who have needs that include help with administrative tasks, looking for jobs and learning French – as well as psychological support for the trauma they have experienced.
“The profiles of those who have stayed in France often involve complex issues,” says Audrey Terradura, director of emergency and crisis management for ALC, an organisation that played a key role in the emergency response in Nice in 2022.
“There are elderly people, seriously ill individuals, families with disabled children, for whom access to employment and independent housing is more difficult.” Reflecting on a never-ending war
Tatyana, Yuliya and Karina are three Ukrainians who arrived in Paris at the start of the war. Four years on, they still fear for loved ones left behind in Ukraine – and for their own futures as the conflict drags on.
“When we talk about the war, we can’t turn the page, not at all. It’s February 2026, and the trauma is still there,” says Tatyana, whose son may soon join her in Paris.
Her parents died in Ukraine, and other relatives and friends are unable to leave. “How can you forget that?” she asks.
“Our house was partially destroyed. So I have nothing left there,” says Yuliya. “My history, my whole life. I have nothing.”
“We carry this grief inside us, because we still hurt for our country,” says Karina, who came to France with her young daughter.
“I remember clearly the night the war began. I woke my daughter and told her she could take just one stuffed animal. And we still have that stuffed animal here with us.”
Now well integrated in France, she feels torn between two countries.
“I am half Ukrainian and half French,” she says, adding that it would be difficult for her daughter to return to Ukraine. “My daughter is already a little French girl. She speaks without an accent. She would have a hard time going to a Ukrainian school.”
With support from charity Secours Catholique, the AFUCA distributes food parcels twice a week to around 70 Ukrainians each month.
Tetyana, who arrived in France a year and a half ago, hoped to be able to find work and send money to her daughter, who stayed in Ukraine with her husband who is fighting at the front.
When she first arrived she lived with another of her daughters, but since last summer she has had to cover her own rent and is struggling to make ends meet. “I would really like to work. I’ve worked all my life, but there is always an obstacle,” she says.
She lost her most recent job as a seamstress when the alterations shop ran into financial difficulties. She has since applied to work in home care, but for now relies on the food parcels to get by.
Natalia, who worked as a civil servant in the Ukraine’s Chernihiv region before fleeing in 2024 with her 13-year-old son, works as a hotel cleaner in Nice. She rents a small room from her employer.
“I’m grateful, because in September 2024 I thought I was going to end up on the streets,” she says. But she hopes for more stable housing.
She worries about the future, as she sees the prospect of returning to Ukraine receding as the war drags on.
This article was adapted from the original version in French by Aurore Lartigue.
How do Europeans feel about Russia's war in Ukraine as it enters its fifth year?
Four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European leaders remain steadfast in support — but does the public feel the same?
European nations have reaffirmed their support for Ukraine and solidarity with its people on Tuesday, as the country marks the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion.
Leaders from across the continent have emphasised that support for Kyiv will continue as long as needed until Russia's war ends.
On Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the heads of several EU nations including Denmark, Estonia and Norway visited the Ukrainian capital to mark the occasion.
The leaders met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to show their support for the war effort and pay their respect to the country's fallen soldiers.
In a post on X, von der Leyen said her visit aims to "reaffirm that Europe stands unwaveringly with Ukraine, financially, militarily, and through this harsh winter".
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his sympathy for the estimated 15,000 Ukrainian civilians who have been killed during the conflict.
"Four years of shattered lives — violence, rape, torture, war crimes, and terror. Four years, and thousands of Ukrainian children torn from their land and their families,” he wrote on X.
Macron pledged France's continued support for Ukraine, both bilaterally and through European institutions.
As the war enters its fifth year, where do public sentiments in Europe stand?
France
A recent survey conducted for La Tribune du Dimanche indicated that most of the French public still supports their country’s continued backing of Ukraine, although the enthusiasm appears to be waning compared with figures from four years ago.
According to the poll, 47% of respondents supported Paris continuing arms deliveries to Kyiv, while 39% opposed them. By contrast, a March 2022 study found overwhelming support for military assistance, with 65% in favour at that time.
Opinions on deploying troops to Ukraine for peacekeeping in the event of a ceasefire were more divided: 43% opposed the idea, while 40% supported it.
Meanwhile, 53% of French citizens backed Macron's proposal to resume direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin — a stance that European leaders have largely opposed over the past four years.
Spain
Spanish public opinion appears to be pessimistic about the future of Russia's war in Ukraine, according to official data collected by the Real Instituto Elcano in May 2025.
The survey found that the vast majority of Spaniards believe Ukraine will be unable to recover any of the territory currently occupied by Russia in the event of a peace deal.
Russia is estimated to have occupied around one-fifth of Ukrainian land, with parts of the eastern Donbas region accounting for the bulk of this area.
Only 39% of respondents believed that the war would end this year. Many also expressed doubts that war would not spread outside Ukraine, and voiced concerns about the possibility of it spilling over into other eastern European countries.
Despite this pessimism, about 75% of Spaniards believed that Europe should continue providing military support to Ukraine, while just over half supported sending Spanish troops to help guarantee security in a post-war Ukraine.
Portugal
Meanwhile, half of those surveyed in Portugal supported large-scale EU funding for Ukraine, with Lisbon actively participating in such initiatives.
Just over a third (35%) were in favour of additional state-to-state financial support for Kyiv, albeit on a smaller scale, reflecting the country's more modest economy
Only 11% opposed Lisbon's involvement in EU assistance to Ukraine.
Portuguese respondents were also largely supportive of military engagement: 61% backed the participation of Portuguese troops if NATO became involved in armed conflict or in post-war peacekeeping operations.
In terms of potential concessions, opinions were more divided. Just 15% of Portuguese people said they support a deal requiring Ukraine to accept territorial concessions, as previously proposed by US President Donald Trump.
A larger 43% said their position would depend on the specifics of the agreement and the guarantees offered. Meanwhile, 36% firmly rejected the idea of Ukraine ceding land to Russia in any peace agreement.
Germany
In Germany, a survey conducted in early February by Bild indicated that most people support increasing aid to Ukraine to help it fight back against Russia.
Slightly over half (52%) of respondents believed that the West should provide additional military and financial assistance if Russia continues to undermine peace efforts and avoids meaningful negotiations to end the war.
Most respondents favoured splitting aid equally between weapons and financial support, while 12% preferred increasing financial assistance alone, and another 12% supported boosting arms deliveries exclusively.
Around a third of people (35%) opposed continuing support for Ukraine.
Ukraine Damages Pipeline That Feeds Russia's Black Sea Ports
Ukraine has taken its attacks on Russian oil export infrastructure further upstream, hitting a major pipeline pumping station belonging to the Russian midstream giant Transneft. The company handles about 80 percent of Russian oil exports, and its pipeline network is essential for moving crude from far-flung oilfields to seaports for loading.
On Monday morning, Russian officials confirmed a Ukrainian attack on the pumping station at Almetyevsk, Russia, about 700 miles from the Ukrainian front lines. According to Ukraine's military, more than 35 drone strike aircraft navigated through more than 900 miles of Russian airspace to reach the target. Russia's defense ministry has acknowledged shooting down drones in the region, but has not confirmed any damage. Videos from the scene show billowing flames and smoke around the pumping station.
The station is a critical waypoint on the Druzhba pipeline network, which gathers oil from prolific fields in central Russia and Siberia to pump to Eastern Europe and to the loading terminals at Novorossiysk and Tuapse, Russia. Ukraine has repeatedly struck these export terminals in hopes of limiting Russian oil sales, with some success. This week's strike on the Druzhba pumping station appears to be having an effect as well: Reuters reports that Transneft has been forced to temporarily reduce intake into its pipeline network by 250,000 barrels per day.
Druzhba is best known for its role in supplying refineries in Hungary and Slovakia, which continue to accept Russian oil at a discounted price, and it is at the center of an internal EU dispute over aid to Ukraine. On Monday, Hungary refused to give its approval to a 90 billion euro loan from the EU to Kyiv, reversing its prior commitment and angering EU leaders; the down-vote also scuppered a planned ban on all EU maritime services for Russian oil shipping. Hungarian leader Victor Orban's stated reason for the "no" vote was an ongoing interruption in service on the Ukrainian stretch of the Druzhba pipeline, which was damaged in a Russian strike in January and remains shut down. Slovakia's Prime Minister, Robert Fico, joined in the protest vote.
Monday's deliberate Ukrainian strike on a Russian segment of the pipeline system has been seen as a retort to Hungary and a sign of defiance - and the Armed Forces of Ukraine made the connection in its announcement.
"The [Almetyevsk] station ensures critical pressure and uninterrupted pumping of raw materials directly into the Druzhba oil pipeline, as well as to the oil refineries of Tatarstan. Now we can expect the whining of Orbán and Fico," the AFU said in a statement.
Copyright AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
