EU promises big on defense ― but risks leaving Ukraine disappointed

BRUSSELS ― Hugs. Photo ops. A pledge to keep arming Ukraine.

Despite everything that's happened in the six short weeks since Donald Trump returned to the White House, that's about all European Union leaders had to offer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at an emergency summit in Brussels Thursday.

Sure, they hammered out plans to beef up the EU's defense sector, but ― and in the short term this is perhaps what matters most ― they fell short of agreeing on any new commitments to strengthen Ukraine's hand in the immediate future.

Kyiv is grappling with a cutoff in U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing as Trump's administration dials up pressure on Zelenskyy to strike a rapid peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ahead of the gathering in Brussels, diplomats from countries that staunchly support Ukraine had voiced hope that the meeting would deliver new commitments to put Kyiv in a stronger position.

"We have to support Ukraine now more than ever," EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas said before the extraordinary summit.

But after 10 hours of talks, and despite a public embrace of Zelenskyy — who addressed journalists flanked by the leaders of the EU's top two institutions, Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa — the final conclusions brokered among national leaders focused only on their collective efforts to build up a fragmented defense sector.

The portion on Ukraine didn't even pass muster among the 27 members due to opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who hasn't hidden his support for Putin and who stated his opposition to the statement ahead of the meeting, and stuck to that stance.

The rest of the EU dismissed any sense of disunity. "He's done that before," outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters. "That has not overturned the [European] Union."

Without Hungary, 26 countries signed off on a Ukraine statement that draws red lines for future peace talks, calls for Kyiv's accession to the bloc and pledged future military aid without specific targets.

Peace through strength

It wasn't for lack of trying on Zelenskyy's part. 

Wearing his signature black wartime garb that had drawn mockery from Trump during his White House visit last week, the Ukrainian president spelled out a list of immediate needs during a speech on his arrival at the glass-and-steel Justus Lipsius building in Brussels.

He described Russia's daily aerial barrages hammering Ukrainian cities, calling for Europe to "speed up" work on a financial instrument geared to help Ukraine's military. He demanded a new package of sanctions against Russia, and urged the EU to move ahead with plans to admit Ukraine into the bloc by 2030.

"Achieving ‘peace through strength’ requires Ukraine to be in the strongest possible position, with Ukraine’s own robust military and defense capabilities as an essential component," the statement signed by 26 leaders read. "The European Union remains committed, in coordination with like-minded partners and allies, to providing enhanced political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine and its people."

An EU diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity defended the EU's plans to ramp up military aid for Ukraine. Work on future arms packages would continue as part of a coalition of the willing, potentially including non-EU members such as the United Kingdom.

Before the gathering, Kallas had attempted to rally EU countries around an effort to source at least €20 billion in military aid for delivery to Ukraine during 2025, according to several diplomats. Despite extensive talks between diplomats, however, that effort failed to win unanimous support.

In closed-door discussions between leaders, Kallas said the bloc should focus on providing weapons for Ukraine, not just acquiring them for countries' own use, according to two EU diplomats.

Zelenskyy did score a few concrete commitments on Thursday, just not from the EU. Norway pledged to bolster its direct military aid to Ukraine to €8 billion for 2025, more than doubling its previous commitment.

Elephant in the room

The major question hanging over Ukraine's future is whether the EU can replace or somehow compensate for a cutoff in U.S. military aid and intelligence.

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal raised the point during closed-door discussions, according to EU official directly aware of the exchanges, asking: Can we go it alone?

The answer is a resounding silence.

EU countries have collectively pledged more to Ukraine in terms of financial and military support than the U.S. since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion three years ago. That support will continue to flow in coming months, with some €30 billion in financial aid earmarked for 2025 via loans backed by Russia's frozen assets.

But the end of U.S. military support leaves a gaping hole in allies' ability to support Ukraine in all aspects of its war, most notably when it comes to intelligence and targeting information for precision weaponry.

“The end of intelligence sharing is very significant indeed for Ukraine,” Colonel Philip Ingram, a former British army intelligence officer told POLITICO. “It means losing access to target acquisition information for long-range missiles, but also intercepting incoming rockets and drone fleets. EU member states just simply don’t have much of a strategic intelligence capability because they’re so internally focused — countries like Germany just depend entirely on NATO. They now face the prospect of having to step up, but it takes decades and hundreds of millions of dollars.”

As European leaders sat down for dinner, a report by NBC News citing current and former U.S. officials raised fresh doubts about U.S. commitments to NATO, suggesting that Washington may only commit to defending countries that commit a certain percentage of their gross domestic product to defense.

Concern about a potential U.S. withdrawal or downgrade in Europe's security architecture has set off one of the biggest geopolitical crises to hit the continent in decades, with leaders engaging in a frenzy of diplomacy over the past two weeks.

When all was said and done in Brussels, the Europeans' scramble to avoid losing the U.S. security guarantee proved to be their overriding priority. Helping to strengthen Ukraine's position on the battlefield, and at the negotiating table, ended up being a distant second-order concern — as demonstrated by the amount of time they spent talking about Ukraine versus defense.

The defense discussion lasted for most of the 10 hours, with leaders locking horns over how to finance an €800 billion defense rampup and how much of their investment to spend on European versus non-EU sources.

Talks on Ukraine, however, were done and dusted in about 15 minutes, according to one EU diplomat. That said it all.

Jacopo Barigazzi, Gabriel Gavin, Elisa Braun, Rasmus Buchsteiner and Lucia Mackenzie contributed reporting.