The applause that greeted Volodymyr Zelenskyy at this week's European Union summit in Brussels was warm, but it could not disguise a harder fact: Ukraine's president arrived needing more than sympathy. With winter approaching, he told reporters that Vladimir Putin "wants to destroy us" and that Ukrainians must prepare for a difficult season. Olena Prokopenko, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, argues that it may be the most testing winter since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The pressure is coming from two directions.

Relations with Washington, long Ukraine's largest source of military aid, have deteriorated since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Trump told Newsmax that he finds Zelenskyy "more difficult to deal with" than Putin, called Ukraine's fresh strikes on Russian oil refineries "a disgrace", and agreed on 12 October to buy Russian diesel, a move widely read as a retreat from sanctions. Zelenskyy responded with unusual bluntness, noting that American missiles are being sent to the Middle East and that Ukraine is therefore "not a priority". That leaves Europe as the only plausible substitute, and here the picture is less comforting.

Brussels discussed three sensitive subjects with Zelenskyy: American attitudes towards Russia, the reliability of Starlink, the satellite service Ukraine depends on for battlefield communications, and, above all, money. European governments have offered rhetoric generously, but their budgets are strained, and replacing American weapons and intelligence at speed is a large industrial task. Skeptics in some capitals will say that Kyiv's strikes on Russian energy have complicated diplomacy; supporters reply that they are among the few levers Ukraine still holds. Both views contain some truth.