Extract from Eureka Street
- Home
- Vol 36 No 3
- After four years, the war has changed Europe
- Sergey Maidukov Sr.
- 26 February 2026
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Agence France-Presse ahead of the war’s fourth anniversary on February 24: ‘You can’t say we’re losing the war. Honestly, we’re definitely not losing it. The question is whether we will win.’
This particular question, which is life or death for Ukraine, is becoming increasingly pressing for Europe. How long can this grinding war of attrition continue without one side clearly gaining an advantage?
The recent claim in the Russian Ministry of Defence newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that Ukraine has lost over 1.5 million troops is almost certainly inflated. Yet Zelenskyy’s own estimate of 55,000 military dead, offered on France 2, strains credibility in the opposite direction, particularly given that Ukrainian command puts Russian losses at nearly 1.3 million. A crude midpoint between these competing narratives, accounting for the wounded and missing in action, may be closer to the truth than either side would care to admit. The scale alone confirms that Europe is witnessing the largest interstate war on its soil since the mid-twentieth century.
Ukraine is no longer only defending its own territory. It is absorbing the costs of Europe’s unreadiness for war. After four years, is there an end to it, or only more exhaustion?
The Office of the President dismissed as false a Wall Street Journal report suggesting preparations are underway for several more years of fighting following the stalled peace talks. Yet regardless of political messaging, the current diplomatic landscape offers no visible pathway to a durable peace.
Since Russia shows no sign of relinquishing its claims to the Donbas, and Ukraine has given no indication it would cede the region voluntarily, there is simply no territory — literal or figurative — on which to negotiate. Thus the war continues in its own native language of cannonades, explosions and air-raid sirens.
Throughout 2025 and into the winter of 2026, there were virtually no weeks without large-scale Russian air assaults. In 2025 alone, Russia launched more than 54,000 Shahed-type drones, including over 32,000 strike variants. Since autumn, the average rate has remained steady at roughly 176 drones per day, or more than 5,000 per month.
The thunderous night of February 22 was not exceptional for Ukraine. Ballistic missiles and Kinzhal-carrying MiG-31Ks flew over Kyiv, drones over five suburban districts, one person killed, eight pulled from the rubble, energy infrastructure struck in Odesa. Since mid-January alone, critical infrastructure has been struck hundreds of times. There are nights when Russia launches hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine’s energy sector, treating every transformer, substation and pumping station as a legitimate target. Each attack is a tragedy for the victims. For everyone else, they have become a pattern and the world has largely stopped noticing.
Emergency crews work around the clock to restore power to entire districts of Kyiv and other cities. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they do not. The frosty winter is drawing to a close, and Ukrainians look toward the coming spring and to sunlight, thaw, and the hope that warmer days might ease the strain.
Unfortunately, that hope may prove misplaced. In a country under systematic shelling, summer offers no guarantee of relief. Without stable electricity, heat becomes a weapon. Apartments turn into ovens. Refrigerators fail. Water pressure drops as pumping stations lose power. Sewage systems grow vulnerable. Cities might wither in the cold, but they also decay in the heat.
Presently no Ukrainian city is sufficiently protected from air attack, regardless of its distance from the front. Throughout 2025 and into the winter of 2026, there were virtually no weeks without large-scale Russian air assaults. In 2025 alone, Russia launched more than 54,000 Shahed-type drones, including over 32,000 strike variants. Since autumn, the average rate has remained steady at roughly 176 drones per day, or more than 5,000 per month.
Ukraine continues its struggle for survival with infrastructure already strained by months of destruction and blackouts. Spring promises no relief, because wars know no seasons. They are measured in kilometres of front lines and in the endurance of transport networks, power grids, pipes, substations and logistics. Behind the armies stands the industrial stamina of their states. The basis of this stamina is finance.
Understanding this, Europe has proposed a €90 billion support package — €60 billion for military spending and €30 billion for budgetary support. The arithmetic appears reassuring, but arithmetic and deployment are two separate things.
Much of the military allocation will reinforce Europe’s own defence-industrial base. Strategically that strengthens Europe. But practically, it does not guarantee additional air-defence batteries over Kharkiv next month.
Certain systems remain irreplaceable. Patriot batteries and their interceptors, American-made and repeatedly described by Kyiv as non-substitutable against ballistic missiles, cannot be conjured by European financing alone. Loans and timelines cannot do the work of shielding and intercepting.
And the package itself remains blocked. Hungary has vetoed the EU plan, putting Ukraine’s expected US$8 billion IMF loan at risk — the fund’s support was contingent on budget stability the EU money was meant to ensure. Budapest’s obstruction does not end there. Hungary has also threatened to veto the EU’s twentieth sanctions package against Russia unless Ukraine reopens the Druzhba pipeline, damaged in a Russian strike on January 27. Prime Minister Orbán has been unequivocal that there should be no pipeline, no sanctions. Slovakia’s Robert Fico has echoed the threat, warning he will cut emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine if Kyiv does not comply. One country’s economic interests, it turns out, can hold twenty-seven others hostage.
The European Union has never needed unity more than it does now. The threat is no longer hypothetical, it is aerial, infrastructural, and existential. Ukraine offers the starkest possible lesson of a country unprepared for Russian aggression, paying ever since in lives, spending winters without heat and summers without water.
Ninety billion euros is not a gift to Ukraine, it is the price of European security and, by any measure, a bargain. The question is whether Europe will find the will to pay it before the lesson becomes its own.
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