The EU on the day of Ukraine's thirty-fifth Independence Day approved one more tranche of financial aid for the amount of €6.1bn for Ukraine to purchase air defence systems, missiles, ammunition and radars. The news comes on top of the €16 billion in procurement contracts already approved, half of which have already been delivered to Ukraine on Monday. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described it as a reaction to the escalating Russian air attacks and said Europe was with Ukraine and will supply it with what it requires, when it requires. European Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius also stated that the idea is for Kyiv to "buy the missiles and interceptors it urgently requires to safeguard its citizens and its territory.

The figure is encircled by a larger building structure. The EU's €90 billion aid package for 2026 and 2027 is divided almost equally between macro-financial and budget support with €30 billion allocated for macro-financial assistance and €60 billion for defence. The EU and its Member States have provided a total of €220.2 billion of support to Ukraine since the invasion started in 2022, including €3.8 billion frozen from Russian sovereign assets. The Commission said most of the new procurement will be from European defence manufacturers, rather than be imported, and thus directly linked to the European industry's own expansion.

The timing was no coincidence. The pledge was delivered hours before a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing leaders took place in Kyiv, chaired by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was also speaking from the spot. President of the European Council António Costa was in attendance, as were leaders from some 30 partner nations via phone. Britain had given permission for Burnham to provide the French company with classified information about components manufactured in the UK for the French cruise missile, SCALP, the cousin of Storm Shadow, the missile manufacturer's office said. The agenda also addressed a topic which Brussels has been a long time discussing: coordinated action against the shadow fleet of tankers Moscow is employing to transport sanctioned oil around Western price caps. Interestingly, there was no American official among the attendees.

The peak was where President Volodymyr Zelensky attached figures to a problem that can't be solved with money. He revealed that the United States supplied Ukraine with 675 Patriot interceptors in 2023, dropping to 364 in 2025 and finally settling at 264 for 2026, just to get them through the winter, when they needed at least 300. More than 376 missiles were shot at Ukrainian targets in just one month this summer, according to figures quoted at the summit, a testament to why stocks of interceptors and not euros – have become the limiting factor. Washington's own cupboard is empty in some respects: The Pentagon is using up its own stockpiles, built in response to Iran's confrontation, and on 17 August, it gave Raytheon a $22.9 billion contract that explicitly called for the reconstruction of depleted stocks of cruise missiles. That's already shifted more of Ukraine's air-defence responsibility to Europe's production lines.

It's in those production lines where the economic story is. Even after cutting full-year sales forecasts due to the cancellation of a German frigate contract, Rheinmetall's share price has increased by over 12fold since the 2022 invasion and is currently sitting on an order backlog of €80.5bn.Despite this, Rheinmetall's share price has more than doubled since the invasion last year, with the company reporting 39 per cent sales growth and 74 per cent profit growth in the first half of this year. Saab's order intake is up 284 per cent and Rheinmetall's 323 per cent since 2021, unaudited, and the broader STOXX Europe Aerospace and Defence index is trading at the close of 42 times annual earnings forecast, compared with 20 times for the STOXX 600. Germany's defence spending is expected to hit €117 billion this year, up from the previous year, and will keep growing by 18 per cent in real terms in 2029 to hit €162 billion. The total defence spending in 2025 amounted to more than $574 billion, which is about a 20 per cent increase in real terms across all NATO members, and Canada, and would represent a push for spending to reach 5 per cent of GDP by 2035 as agreed last year at the NATO summit. Production capacity for ammunition has increased by approximately 40 per cent in the bloc since the start of the war, but the level of orders, which have been in the hundreds of thousands for years, indicates that hardware is not being produced in the same vein as budgets are being approved.

There's a tougher question beneath the applause bars that is not often seen in press releases. A significant portion of this financing structure is based on frozen Russian central bank assets and the base is not as solid as Brussels would wish. A Moscow court is still considering a lawsuit by the country's central bank against Euroclear, the Belgian depository holding large portions of the immobilised funds, and Russia has separately declared the entire venture an expropriation and said that could have repercussions on the euro's use as a reserve currency. The economic cost of the war continues to mount, with Bloomberg projecting in August that Russian attacks on Ukraine's ports could cost the country up to 2 per cent of GDP this year, as the number of commitments grows. None of that means that the €6.1 billion is "wasted money". It is not whether Brussels is ready to grant another tranche, it's whether Europe's own factories, courts, and tax payers can afford a financing mechanism that is still being challenged in a Moscow courtroom and delivered at a clip equal to the amount of money being paid out on Ukrainian cities every night.