Europe’s grand €90 billion answer to Ukraine’s funding crisis survived for just eight months before Volodymyr Zelenskyy began proposing that part of next year’s allocation should be paid early. Ukraine says it has already raided money earmarked for the second half of 2026 and is now staring down a €23.1 billion hole in its defense budget. JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. That is why a letter from the foreign ministers of Sweden, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands has dragged Europe’s Russian-frozen-assets fight back onto the table. The four governments say the €90 billion package will be insufficient and want Commission experts to explore new uses for Russia’s immobilized assets. Bringing some of the 2027 money forward could fill part of this year’s hole. It would also obviously leave Ukraine with less money next year. That is the approaching financial cliff: Ukraine could run short again during 2027, while the EU’s next seven-year budget only begins in 2028. European governments would have to improvise another financial bridge in the meantime. The letter therefore returns to the €210 billion in frozen Russian assets, presenting them as the rope that could pull Ukraine back from the financial cliff edge. What’s new in the letter is that it acknowledges that a way must be found to share the responsibility and liability of using the money, so that Belgium is not left carrying the risk alone, the obstacle that stalled the plan in December.