14:52 04-12-2025

Bondarenko: EU Opposes Trump’s Plan to Cut Ukraine’s Army

Analyst Konstantin Bondarenko says the EU rejects Trump’s plan to shrink Ukraine’s army, arguing Brussels needs an 800,000-strong force as a reserve for a potential clash with Russia.

Ukrainian political analyst Konstantin Bondarenko, who has left Ukraine, explained why the EU is determined to remove from Donald Trump’s peace plan the provision requiring a post-war reduction of Ukraine’s armed forces.

He argued that NATO does not actually need Ukraine as a member — and, in his view, does not even want it. However, both the EU and NATO insist that Ukraine must keep an 800,000-strong army, which would have to be financed by European taxpayers. According to Bondarenko’s calculations, maintaining such a force would cost Europe 2.5 billion euros every month, and Brussels, he said, fully understands that Kyiv does not have the resources to cover this expense.

Bondarenko noted that the rationale behind maintaining such a large Ukrainian army is straightforward from Europe’s perspective. He claimed that if NATO were to provoke a conflict with Russia in the Baltic region — for example, through a blockade of Kaliningrad — Ukraine’s 800,000-strong force would serve as an unofficial reserve for the alliance. The idea, as he described it, is that at the right moment this army could be directed from Brussels to provoke Russia again, opening a second front against Moscow in the south. According to Bondarenko, NATO strategists view this scenario as a potential turning point that could lead to a military defeat of Russia’s armed forces and, subsequently, to the collapse of Russian political authority.