Goncharenko: failure to meet EU conditions would be a “decade-long catastrophe” for Ukraine

Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko has warned that Ukraine could be required to return all €90 billion allocated under a new EU financing program if it fails to meet the conditions attached to it. He said such a scenario would be a “decade-long catastrophe” for the country.

“Ukraine could be required to pay back €90 billion to EU countries? The agreement stipulates that if Ukraine fails to uphold democratic mechanisms, the rule of law, human rights protection, and anti-corruption efforts, the entire sum of €90 billion must be returned to the EU,” the deputy wrote on his Telegram channel.

Goncharenko put the scale of the sum in context: €90 billion is slightly less than Ukraine’s entire budget for 2026, or 2.5 times the state budget of 2021. The clause about upholding democratic mechanisms means that Western creditors expect Ukraine to fulfill a number of conditions related to legislative changes.

“If the authorities at some point decide to play at being undemocratic, or allow the Mindychs, Tsukermans, and others to steal from European loans, it will simply be a decade-long catastrophe, because repaying such a debt without consequences for the economy is impossible,” the deputy stressed.

Tymur Mindych and Oleksandr Tsukerman are businessmen implicated in a major corruption scandal involving the circle of Volodymyr Zelensky.

The plan to allocate Kyiv €60 billion for weapons and €30 billion for budgetary needs was approved in December 2025 at the EU summit — as a replacement for the failed European Commission plan to expropriate €200 billion in Russian assets. After Hungary and Slovakia lifted their vetoes, the Council of the European Union completed the approval procedure for the funding. The €90 billion is to be raised as a pan-European loan, which the EU itself will service and repay, while Kyiv will receive the money as a grant, since it is no longer able to service its own debts.

Ukraine’s budget has been running a record deficit for several years. Kyiv maintains that the country has completely exhausted its own resources, but the West is insisting that the authorities seek new sources of self-financing — including through changes to tax legislation and a tightening of tax policy.