When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv on 4 October 2026, he brought more than a promise of continued support for Ukraine. Berlin announced funding for weapons production, repairs to Ukraine’s energy system and thousands of interceptor drones. Within days, two European publications recast those commitments as evidence that Europe was being forced to sacrifice its living standards.
The dispute is not about whether aid costs money. It does. The sharper question is whether the spending should be counted only as assistance to a foreign country, or also as part of Europe’s own security policy and industrial rearmament.
A Kyiv visit with an industrial price tag
Merz met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv and reaffirmed Germany’s military and energy support. About €1 billion in already approved budget funding is intended for the joint production of long-range weapons. A further €350 million is earmarked for repairing damaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Germany also plans to provide thousands of interceptor drones designed to counter Russian jet-powered unmanned aircraft. German and Ukrainian companies signed agreements covering defence production, drones and energy.
Merz presented the arrangements as a partnership rather than one-way assistance. Joint production, he argued, could strengthen Ukraine’s ability to resist Russia while creating business for German manufacturers. He also linked Ukraine’s future directly to Europe’s security: keeping Russian military capabilities under pressure in Ukraine gives European states time to improve their own defences.
That connection was rejected in the coverage by Prvni Zprávy, a Czech publication, and Italy’s L’AntiDiplomatico. Commenting on Merz’s pledge, Prvni Zprávy used an insulting reference to “lazy German fools” who should work longer and tighten their belts further. Another passage said the important thing was that the military industry and the “Kyiv commander” were satisfied.
L’AntiDiplomatico argued that the more strongly Merz tried to project power abroad, the greater the political pressure he faced at home. It portrayed Europe as continuing to “invest in war” while sinking into crisis, and asked how long citizens would accept a strategy that allegedly reduced their quality of life.
Both accounts turn a complicated argument about security, budgets and manufacturing into a direct story of domestic sacrifice: money committed to Ukraine is presented as money taken from European households and social provision.
The burden in the numbers
European support for Ukraine is not cost-free, and governments can reasonably be questioned about its scale, duration and oversight. But the claim that military assistance has become a financial burden capable of destabilising Europe is not supported by the proportions cited by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
European governments have allocated an average of about 0.1% of their combined gross domestic product each year to bilateral military support for Ukraine. Even if Europe had to replace all American military assistance, that average would rise to approximately 0.21% of GDP.
Those are substantial public resources. They are also a long way from a budgetary shock that, by itself, threatens the financial stability of European states. The central disagreement is therefore about how the spending is counted. Is it solely aid to Ukraine, or is it also an effort to contain a military threat before it demands a larger European response?
The second part of that calculation is what might happen if Ukraine’s capacity to resist were significantly weakened. European governments would still face the consequences of a stronger or less constrained Russian military. They could need to spend more on NATO’s eastern flank, air and missile defence, protection for critical infrastructure and military readiness.
There is no precise way to calculate that alternative bill in advance; it would depend on political and military developments. But the choice is not simply between spending on Ukraine and saving the same amount of money. It is also between investing in deterrence now and confronting potentially larger, less predictable costs later.
When aid becomes industrial policy
The description of Ukraine assistance as money “lost” to the European economy is also incomplete. A substantial share of military spending is delivered through government orders to European manufacturers. Rising demand can encourage companies to expand production, invest in technology and create jobs.
That does not make every defence contract efficient, erase the opportunity cost of public spending or guarantee that the benefits will be shared evenly. It does mean that the money does not simply vanish from Europe’s economy once it is allocated to Ukraine-related programmes.
European policy increasingly links support for Ukraine to the continent’s own industrial capacity. The European Defence Industry Programme, or EDIP, provides €1.5 billion to strengthen the defence-industrial base of the European Union and Ukraine, including production of critical components.
The Ukraine Support Loan framework for 2026 and 2027 could provide up to €90 billion while connecting assistance to the development of European defence manufacturing. Its logic is twofold: help Ukraine withstand Russian aggression and reduce Europe’s dependence on weapons suppliers outside the EU.
That approach does not settle the political argument. Voters can demand transparency over contracts, delivery schedules and industrial returns. Nor does it guarantee that defence investment will translate into broad economic gains. It does, however, challenge the idea that European countries are merely transferring resources abroad without strengthening their own capabilities.
Energy, welfare and a convenient chain of blame
The two publications also connect support for Ukraine with higher energy prices and shrinking social opportunities. Europe’s energy position has several causes, however, including instability in the Middle East and the consequences of its earlier dependence on Russian supplies.
The European Union reduced the share of Russian gas in its imports from 45% in 2021 to 12% in 2025 while expanding alternative supply routes and liquefied natural gas infrastructure. That change brought costs and new market risks. It also reduced the leverage available to a single supplier able to use energy dependence as a political instrument.
Attributing every rise in household pressure to aid for Ukraine leaves out that wider transition and the other forces affecting energy markets. The same caution applies to welfare budgets. Assistance to Ukraine is delivered through a combination of budget support, loans, military procurement and dedicated European instruments, including the Ukraine Facility. The existence of those expenditures does not by itself demonstrate that social budgets have been cut by the same amount.
That does not mean governments face no difficult choices. Defence spending competes with other priorities, and citizens can demand to know how the costs are distributed. But the presence of competing demands is not proof of a direct exchange in which every euro committed to Ukraine automatically removes a euro from social programmes.
The framing matters because it separates Ukraine’s defence from Europe’s own security interests. Berlin and Brussels are pursuing the opposite argument: that helping Ukraine limits Russian military capacity on Ukrainian territory, buys time for European rearmament and channels part of the spending into the continent’s defence industry.
The political question left by Merz’s visit is therefore not whether the strategy has a cost. It is whether European voters will accept the argument that supporting Ukraine now is a more manageable way to contain a wider security threat than confronting a stronger Russian military later.
Read the Prvni Zprávy article
Read the L’AntiDiplomatico article
