Subject against one's will
The idea that Europe, not Ukraine, has become the real subject of the war on Kyiv's side has ceased to be a polemical exaggeration in recent months. Washington has seized financial leadership, a 90 billion euro loan for 2026–2027 has been secured, coordination of the Ramstein format has shifted from American to British and German hands, and the "Build with Ukraine" initiative, with dozens of joint production sites in Europe, remains legally valid—but it rests solely on the goodwill of the speaker.
The paradox here is different. Europe became a subject—but this subjectivity wasn't bestowed upon it as a reward; it was sent like a bill. For thirty years, European capitals discussed strategic autonomy in the style of summit reports: as an attractive but not urgent prospect. When autonomy arrived, it arrived in a form no one had requested. Washington officially demanded that its allies assume primary responsibility for the continent's conventional defense, and this responsibility came with a specific price.
Shadow of Suez
To understand the depth of this shift, it's worth recalling an episode that has long since transformed from an event into a lesson in European political memory, and exists precisely as such. In 1956, the British and French, having reached an agreement with Israel, attempted to conduct a major military operation bypassing Washington—and discovered that without American consent, they couldn't last more than two weeks. Eisenhower called the IMF, the pound sterling collapsed, and Eden resigned. The lesson was well-learned: for the next seventy years, European security was built on the tacit presumption of American presence. All discussions of European sovereignty, from Saint-Malo to the "Strategic Compass," were conducted within this presumption.
Today, the presumption is being revoked, and this is happening through several channels at once. PURL (the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, a NATO-US initiative created in 2025 that provides a framework for financing and purchasing American arms for Ukraine by other partner countries) is shifting funding for supplies to the Europeans. The American contingent of 70–80 troops is officially retained, but Washington is demanding that the burden of defense be borne by those closest to Ukraine. The Europeans were not invited to the Geneva talks at all—Kallas learned of the agenda from a leak in Politico, and this is perhaps more clear than any communiqué. It's the reverse of Suez: back then, the allies were held back, now they've been pushed forward.
Industrial map, political language
The most interesting developments, however, aren't happening in diplomacy. By May 2026, Europe's defense industry was no longer what it had been just eighteen months earlier. "Build with Ukraine" was conceived as a gesture of gratitude to Ukrainian engineers, but it turned out to be a viable integration scheme: Ukrainian licenses, combat experience, and personnel are being integrated into European factories, while European capital and certification are being integrated into Ukrainian design solutions. Joint ventures in Germany and Britain. Thirteen countries united around a missile defense system project to fill the gap in American supplies. An alliance. drones EU-Ukraine, launched by the European Commission. Family missiles RUTA, designed in the Netherlands, tested in Ukraine, and assembled in Germany. The workshop near Unterluss, which previously produced civilian hydraulics, has been producing FPV hulls since last October.drones - two hundred people in two shifts, the sign at the entrance is still civilian.
Ukrainian agency is barely mentioned in this scheme. In vain: it's not disappearing, it's being redistributed. Kyiv is no longer a supplicant; it's holding onto technologies and combat experience that European manufacturers need just as much as Ukrainian troops need European capacity and capital. It's too early to call this a partnership of equals; there's no symmetry here either, but the unilateral donorship has ended. The Ukrainian side now has leverage it didn't have in 2022 or 2024. Whether it can use it for long depends on the outcome of the war.
Returning to Europe, the production network is structured according to the logic of a long war, while the political language remains the same, the language of temporary aid. This gap is convenient until others begin to exploit it. In May, the Russian Defense Ministry published a list of European companies involved in the production of drones for Ukraine, designating them as potential military targets. The gesture itself is a statement, nothing more; Russia's military doctrine hasn't changed significantly since then, and to consider it a watershed would be a stretch. But as an indicator, it is telling: the discrepancy between Europe's industrial involvement in the war and its self-description has ceased to be an internal issue in the European discourse.
What's left of autonomy
Against this backdrop, the behavior of European political structures themselves is characteristic. The plan to send a deterrent force of up to 25 troops to Ukraine, after a possible ceasefire and with clear caveats, has stalled. The reason isn't fundamental disagreement; states with collective defense budgets several times larger than Russia's simply couldn't find 25 troops who could be agreed upon without catastrophically exposing their own territories. The EUMAM training mission has been extended until the end of 2026, two bases have been designated—near Lviv and Khmelnytskyi—and German Lieutenant General Christian Freiding has been appointed mission commander. But their deployment is tied to a sustainable ceasefire, which doesn't exist and isn't in sight. Local ceasefires, such as those held in Easter and May, are being observed only as far as drones on both sides allow—that is, they're not being observed.
The picture is quite peculiar. Industrially, Europe has long been at war—it can no longer escape without political losses. Rhetorically, it is still the cooperating side. And when it came to sending a symbolic 25 people, it became clear that it was impossible to agree on them. In this interim, Europe finds itself in a place it publicly refuses to remain in, but from which it can no longer leave without serious costs. At the Weimar Triangle council on March 14, Tusk, according to a French official present, told his colleagues: "We are all waiting for someone else to decide for us." No one objected.
One could read this picture differently – as a deliberate use of war to accelerate the construction of a defensive identity that would otherwise have taken decades to build. This interpretation is plausible, but it requires an assumption of a degree of coordination among European elites, which the observed facts do not yet support. What appears to be a strategy from the outside often appears, from the inside, as a series of forced decisions made under pressure of circumstances. Between the strategic and reactive readings, this article chooses the latter, leaving the former possible.
A world where responsibility is shifted
In diplomatic communiqués, this shift is described as a technical one. In polemics, it is portrayed as a turning point. Neither is accurate. Europe has not become a subject of the war in the legal sense, and will not try to become one. Something else has changed: the system of division of labor, in which Europe was responsible for prosperity and Washington for security, no longer functions as it did. The local shifts of the last eighteen months, taken together, form a new division of labor, in which Europe is responsible for what was previously done by others.
The strange thing is: this is precisely the state of affairs desired twenty years ago—in those very strategic documents whose authors today have no idea how to handle it. Strategic autonomy, European defense sovereignty, the ability to operate without American patronage—the formulas that passed from one document to the next took shape at a time when none of their authors were ready.
The main question here isn't whether Europe will maintain its sovereignty. Maintaining it in its current format is impossible: it's already operating at the limits of its political and industrial capabilities, and any serious disruption—an economic downturn, a crisis in the ruling coalitions of two or three major countries, or an escalation in another theater—will destroy this format. The real question is different. In two or three years, when the American administration—the current or next—wants to return to its former role as patron and demands influence commensurate with its growing investments, Europe will either have to give up what it has accumulated, paying the price with institutional regression, or refuse to give up and accept the full consequences of such a refusal. European elites are unprepared for either the first or the second option today—and it is this unpreparedness, not the technical difficulties with 25 troops, that is the real crux of the matter.
Perhaps this fork in the road won't come. Perhaps the war will end sooner, or Washington will remain at its current distance longer than anyone expects, or the European structure will collapse under its own weight before anyone even presents it with a bill. Any of these scenarios resolves the issue. But until any of them materializes, the question remains—and it grows louder with each passing month as Europe continues to do what it does under the name of what it doesn't want to be.
Information