Ukraine has asked the European Union to tap into the hundreds of billions in immobilised Russian assets to cover a looming 2027 funding gap of up to $78 billion, with finance minister Sergii Marchenko warning donors in Brussels that Kyiv cannot carry another year of war without a breakthrough on the frozen money.
Ukraine has asked the European Union to tap into the hundreds of billions in immobilised Russian assets to cover a looming 2027 funding gap of up to $78 billion, with finance minister Sergii Marchenko warning donors in Brussels that Kyiv cannot carry another year of war without a breakthrough on the frozen money.
A $78 billion hole in next year's budget
Marchenko laid out the stark arithmetic on Tuesday during a meeting with international donors and financial institutions in Brussels. Of the $52.6 billion in financial aid Ukraine needs from donors next year, only $20 billion has been covered so far, leaving a $32.6 billion gap. On top of that sits roughly $45 billion in defence expenditure for which allies have provided no guarantees.
Combined, that is a $78 billion (€68.77 billion) shortfall — unless allies step up their contributions.
The warning lands at a moment of compounding financial pressure on Kyiv. Only days ago Ukraine put a $155 billion price tag on the war effort while scrambling to close a separate $27 billion funding gap in the current budget year. The message from the finance ministry is now explicit: the state cannot finance the war through 2027 on promises alone.
€210 billion sitting in Brussels
Marchenko's proposed answer is the vast pool of Russian sovereign assets frozen in the EU, estimated at €210 billion, most of it held at Euroclear, the securities depository in Brussels.
According to reports on the closed-door meeting, the minister argued that using the assets would be both a practical and a fair solution: it would meet Ukraine's extraordinary wartime costs, protect the country's debt sustainability, and force Russia to bear the financial cost of the aggression it started.
A day earlier, Marchenko carried the same argument into the open, speaking at a panel hosted by the European Policy Centre. The discussion examined one concrete mechanism: transferring the assets out of Euroclear into an EU-owned custodian, a structure designed to spread the legal and financial risk and to shield Belgium — the country hosting the depository — from bearing it alone.
The minister acknowledged the issue was politically difficult and urged the bloc to build a centralised, legally sound framework rather than letting the money sit idle.
“Be brave enough to take bold actions”
Marchenko's plea to the Europeans was unusually blunt.
“We need our friends, our European politicians, to be brave enough and to make some bold actions,” he said in his remarks. “Unfortunately, the war is longer, the war is harder, and we need to provide some resolution of frozen Russian assets or provide other means for us to survive.”
The framing is deliberate. Kyiv wants the assets conversation reframed from a legal problem into a question of political will — arguing that four years into a full-scale invasion, the boldest financial step is also the most justified one.
Why Brussels still hesitates
Despite years of debate, the frozen assets have never been touched. Only the interest they generate has been put to work, notably through the loan mechanism agreed by the G7, while the principal stays locked up.
EU capitals worry about legal exposure, the precedent of seizing a sovereign state's reserves, and Russian retaliation against Western assets still inside Russia. Marchenko's proposal — a collective EU custodian with a shared legal framework — is designed to answer those objections by spreading the risk across the bloc instead of leaving it with Belgium.
The financial front becomes the battlefield
With Russia escalating its winter campaign against Ukraine's energy grid and Kyiv's own defence spending rising, 2027 is shaping up as the year when the war's financial front becomes as decisive as the military one. A $78 billion gap cannot be closed by speeches; it will be closed either by donor governments, or by Russia's own immobilised billions.
Marchenko's message in Brussels was simple: the money exists, it belongs to the aggressor, and Ukraine's survival may depend on Europe finally finding the courage to use it.
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