Speaking later, von der Leyen said she thought it would be possible to disburse the first tranche of the €45bn funding planned for 2026 in this quarter, meaning by the end of June. The first payment, she indicated, would fund Ukraine’s domestic drone production – “drones from Ukraine for Ukraine”.
IMHO, with this sum, Ukraine can finance enough drone production to saturate and overwhelm Russia’s air defense regularly, and regularly bomb industries which the Russian war effort relies on, with enough drones to disable them.
It is unlikely that Russia will stop producing drones and doing the same, but starting from this summer, it will take damage to strategically important places on a weekly basis, and might run out of money to finance things.
If one looks at polls from “levada.ru”, Putin’s popularity is already dropping at a rapid rate for some months. Hopefully this will accelerate.
The remaining question is: how exactly will the war end? Hopefully with negotiations, but other scenarios are possible. It could be economic crisis, strikes and protests in Russia. Or a coup. But it could also be escalation to weapons of mass destruction. The role of Ukraine’s allies should be to deter Russia from using that last option.