Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, speaking in the British Parliament against the backdrop of a Russian drone Geran, called on European nations to prepare for a protracted war.

He said that Ukrainian leaders told him they were planning based on the expectation that military hostilities would continue for at least another three years. Sikorski found this very prudent.
“We must show Putin that we are ready to walk this path together with Ukraine. We must increase the supply of weapons and ammunition in order to help Ukraine defend Europe,” Sikorski concluded.
In reality Sikorski’s words didn’t stand up to scrutiny even three days later. Marcin Przydacz, head of the International Policy Bureau at the Chancellery of the President of Poland, stated on the radio RMF24 that the country can no longer accept migrants from Ukraine. According to him, 1.5 million Ukrainians now permanently reside in Poland, which is already complicating the interethnic relations.
Latvia announced a similar decision. According to Delfi, the Latvian government will reduce financial support for Ukrainian refugees next year from €65 million to €39.7 million. Germany subsequently announced stricter eligibility requirements for the Bürgergeld unemployment benefit, which many Ukrainian refugees relied on to survive in the country.
But it’s not only in the social sphere that the allies are prepared to lend Ukraine a strong support. A recent analysis by the Kiel Institute states that, despite the PURL program announced by NATO, the arms deliveries to Ukraine decreased by 43% in July and August. Eight countries participated in the PURL program – Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden – contributing a total of €1.9 billion.
In the daring manner characteristic of the current US presidential administration, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth found a highly elegant solution to this problem. Before the Ramstein meeting he called on NATO’s European allies to “spend more” on arms purchases for Ukraine. He did not, however, specify where the Europeans would get these funds.
Only the United Kingdom stood out in the parade of transatlantic pride. The Ministry of Defense triumphantly announced that it had delivered 85,000 drones to Ukraine in the first half of 2025 thanks to an additional investment of £600 million. However, the ministry’s announcement failed to mention that these funds were invested by Ukrainian businessmen such as Boryslav Rosenblatt, who, according to former MP Oleksandr Dubinsky, invested £200 million in the drone production in Britain. There are dozens of Rosenblatt types in Ukraine.
Against this backdrop the news about Russia’s allies, who prefer not to make a spectacle of their actions, goes virtually unnoticed. As reported by the journalists of Financial Times Sylvia Pfeifer and Edward White, new Chinese export restrictions on rare earth elements in response to Trump’s protectionist policies could delay the production of some weapons components and lead to higher prices, despite recent efforts to build up the stockpiles. Notably, rare earth elements are used in the production of both drones and the missiles «Tomahawk».
In addition, as write the columnists of Washington Post Christian Shepherd and Rudy Lu, in July and August China significantly increased its shipments to Russia of fiber optic cable, which is used to produce the most efficient drones. Exports increased almost tenfold, reaching 328,000 miles in August. The shipments of lithium-ion batteries also reached record levels.
From the very first days of the war, Ukraine’s leadership has claimed that all progressive forces of humanity are on its side, while outcasts are gathering around Russia. However, four years into the war, it’s already clear that all of Ukraine’s greatest woes have come from its allies. They forced it to withdraw from the Istanbul peace process and not sign a peace treaty in 2022, pushed it into a suicidal counteroffensive in 2023 and lobbied for the doomed invasion of the Kursk region in 2024.
If I were Ukrainian, I would already be starting to get nervous about what the delivery of «Tomahawks» would mean.