KYIV — Ukraine’s war prospects have grown notably bleaker in recent weeks, with Kyiv overwhelmed by Russian air power and facing an acute cash crunch, a swirl of corruption allegations, new internal political divisions and growing exhaustion among its international supporters — even as the Trump administration is now pushing to revive long-stalled peace negotiations
Amid the constant Russian drone and missile attacks, two shortfalls are raising the greatest alarm: a lack of air defense interceptors and an unexpected $27 billion budget gap that Ukrainian officials say must be filled by year’s end.
President Donald Trump on Sunday added new pressure, urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop targeting Russian oil refineries because of rising global diesel prices — effectively demanding that Ukraine refrain from one of its most effective strategies in defending against Russia’s invasion.
“Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing,” Trump said while in Ireland to watch the Irish Open golf tournament. “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. We spoke to Mr. Zelensky about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world.”
Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, after U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and Kyiv the previous weekend. Trump’s comments about diesel reflected his concern about gasoline prices in the United States, where diesel prices have hit record highs in recent days.
Zelensky has said that Russia is now producing 140 ballistic missiles per month. Since late August, a torrent of missiles and drones has crashed down on Ukraine’s capital city, with air defenses increasingly unable to protect its people from Russia’s huge arsenal.
To intercept those missiles, Zelensky said, Ukraine would need a 2:1 ratio — 280 interceptors — and that he is requesting hundreds of such interceptors “for the difficult, cold months ahead” from U.S. and European stockpiles.
“With all due respect to the Europeans — they have provided a great deal of assistance, and we appreciate it — they need to share these missiles to help save lives,” he said.
European countries have provided air defenses to Ukraine throughout the war but have been reluctant to dig deeper into their stocks out of concern for their own defenses amid a global shortage.
Zelensky’s pitch for interceptors comes as his country’s budget crunch has created serious friction between Ukraine and European nations that have become his country’s main source of financing ever since Trump ended direct U.S. assistance at the start of his second term.
With troop movements on the front line largely frozen by the threat of drones overhead, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a high-stakes race to spend on military technology. Russia in recent weeks has ramped up its production and deployment of jet-powered drones, which are able to evade Ukraine’s defenses more effectively.
News of Ukraine’s budget shortfall rattled European officials who thought they had mostly addressed Kyiv’s budget needs for this year and next year with a package of more than $100 billion.
The timing is particularly difficult for Brussels, with the European Union now deep in negotiations over its sprawling, multiyear budget while Ukraine-skeptic, nationalist political parties are gaining ground. Alternative for Germany (AfD), which finished first in a key regional election this month, and France’s National Rally have opposed further money for Ukraine.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, in an address to parliament earlier this month, said the country was facing a $27 billion shortfall in its defense budget for 2026. While Koretskyi said that the government had already earmarked $1.5 billion in domestic funds to be redirected to defense, he also pleaded with Kyiv’s Western partners, the so-called “coalition of the willing,” to fill the gap.
That request, made while some European leaders were in Ukraine to mark its Independence Day in August, stoked deep unease.
“Ukraine could have chosen a different method to present the news — the feeling among the coalition of the willing was as if a bomb had been dropped,” a senior European diplomat told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive negotiations.
“Ukraine must get serious, implement real austerity measures and get the work of [parliament] into order,” the senior diplomat said. “There is no time for internal games. “They must do what is requested to receive next payments from the E.U. and the IMF.”
European policymakers expected some divergence from budget projections as the war grinds on and battlefield conditions shift, but they did not envision a shortfall this big or this soon, said two diplomats, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. E.U. officials say they have they serious questions about how the $27 billion figure was calculated.
“A lot of member states were a bit surprised about the timing and dimension of it,” one of the diplomats said.
The shortfall highlights Europe’s challenge in financing the cost of Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
European leaders have framed the war as an existential fight for their own nations’ security, but they must balance the needs of Zelensky’s government with political imperatives at home, including public frustration over the rising cost of living, driven up by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The sentiment that Kyiv is asking for a lot, at the wrong moment for Europe, also has been echoed by those in Kyiv.
“Suddenly running out of money and simply shrugging one’s shoulders isn’t exactly kosher,” said a Kyiv-based European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“It’s certainly not going to be easy to close that gap, especially given the upcoming elections in several European countries,” the diplomat said. “Politicians are very nervous about the elections, and most countries are dealing with deficits.”
Some European officials, meanwhile, suspect Kyiv’s request might be inflated as a political tactic to keep pressure on the bloc, another European diplomat said.
The Ukrainian government, meanwhile, has rushed to explain the shortfall, seeking to head off accusations of misappropriation of funds that have plagued Kyiv in the wake of a string of major investigations revealing top-level government corruption and evidence of fraudulent or wasteful weapons contracts.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general resigned last week after investigators raided his office in relation to corruption allegations involving illegal call centers.
The prosecutor, Ruslan Kravchenko, is the latest figure from Zelensky’s top official to come under scrutiny, as Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies pursue investigations into the energy and defense ministries.
Officials and economists insist that the shortfall was caused largely by the growing costs of the long, technology-driven war.
Hlib Vyshlinsky, an Ukrainian economist who heads the Center for Economic Strategy, an independent think tank, said that by the end of June there was an understanding between Kyiv and its international partners that Ukraine would face a big budget hole in 2027 but not in 2026.
“Then late August comes and there was this huge gap,” Vyshlinsky said. Vyshlinsky blamed the chaos that followed in Zelensky’s dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov but added that a drop in international military aid also drove up Kyiv’s need for weapons spending.
Vyshlinksy also pointed to a decision to increase military salaries this summer, which he said was “not planned in the budget initially, but was long overdue.”
According to data published by the Kiel Institute, which tracks military and financial aid to Ukraine, the total military allocation in the first half of 2025 was about $26.1 billion, while in the first half of 2026, that number had dropped to about $19.6 billion.
Vyshlinsky also blamed Ukraine’s international partners, comparing budget negotiations to “a Turkish bazaar … where the buyer wants to pay as little as possible, but the product is changing all the time.”
“Everyone expected that the E.U. loan would cover all of Ukraine’s needs. But it did not,” he said. “They want to spend as little money as possible.”
Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, the London-based think tank, pointed to a lag in international aid disbursements, saying there was a delay of at least several billion dollars.
“It’s a much more complicated picture than simply a shortfall,” Lutsevych said in an interview. “The Ukrainian economy is already under enormous strain due to the drop in grain exports and Russian attacks on logistics warehouses. All this creates a compound effect.”
On Thursday, Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko confirmed that Ukraine had been forced to cut government spending because of delays in international financial aid.
Kyiv has been consumed by the escalating strikes, with an attack this week even hitting a Ukrainian television studio as journalists were mid-broadcast.
Russia has also targeted food and medical warehouses and logistics hubs, incinerating tons of medication and food and leading to temporary supply disruptions.
This week, a strike hit one of the World Health Organization’s main warehouses storing humanitarian aid on the outskirts of Kyiv. The agrarian policy and food minister, Taras Vysotsky, has warned that food prices could increase by 2.5 percent because of the attacks.
The E.U. could front-load part of next year’s aid, but that would risk political pushback now as well as pressure next year — a presidential election year in France — to come up with even more money.
For now, E.U. and Ukrainian officials are in talks to determine the scale of the shortfall and where it came from. “We are working with Ukraine and the IMF to clarify urgent needs, and the reform agenda, while mobilizing further international support,” the E.U. economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, told The Post.
Some countries, such as Sweden, Poland and Spain, have called for revisiting a contentious proposal to finance Ukraine using frozen Russian assets, which have been held in Europe since the invasion. That approach remains divisive.
An E.U. plan to tap into the Russian assets last year failed, as Belgium, where most of the funds are held, and others including Italy raised concerns about financial stability or Russian retaliation.
David L. Stern and Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report.
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