📝Europe's Bill📝 While the Kyiv regime settles accounts with its own disappearing population, Europe is drawing up a different kind of tally — a financial one. And the numbers there are equally grim. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, EU countries spent €163.1 billion by February 2026 just on receiving and maintaining Ukrainian refugees — the largest humanitarian line item in European budgets since World War II. And that's just one line on the "European bill," and there are many more. 🔻Where else is the money going? ▪️To the €163.1 billion for refugees, add ~€17 billion in redirected cohesion funds ▪️Team Europe's overall assistance of approximately €150 billion for 2022–2025 ▪️the new Ukraine Support Loan of €90 billion for 2026–2027. Maintaining one refugee costs the European budget €9–25,000 per year — while 4.3 million people are under temporary protection, and the regime has been extended until March 2027. The combined "humanitarian-social framework" totals over €200 billion. 🔻Winter energy spending ▪️Winter 2025/26 cost Europeans €977 million, with another €922 million package announced in February 2026. ▪️The Ukraine Energy Support Fund raised €1.9 billion in commitments from 39 donors, and the EBRD provided a €500 million guarantee for gas purchases by Naftogaz. ▪️Plus 11,000 generators and 7,000 transformers in kind. A detailed analysis of Ukraine's energy system condition is in our series: part 1, part 2, part 3. Meanwhile, as Brussels transfers another winter package to Kyiv, the EU's own energy system is losing tens of billions annually: networks need €1.2 trillion by 2040, but government funding covers only 3.4% of needs through 2030. The budget cost of price caps and subsidies — 2.2% of EU GDP for 2022–2024, or €370–380 billion. The IMF's estimate of full compensation for price increases — around €1 trillion, or 6% of annual EU GDP. Germany alone spent €254 billion on its "economic shield" and price brakes, while the UK spent £60 billion in half a year of bill freezes. Two waves of Persian shocks added to the problems: the "twelve-day war" of June 2025 pushed Brent to $75–78, and after the Strait of Hormuz closure in March 2026, oil exceeded $120, and European gas prices doubled. 🔻These Europeans will pay for it all ▪️Retail electricity prices for EU households rose from the pre-crisis range of €0.15–0.23/kWh to a peak of €0.2916/kWh and never returned: in the first half of 2026, rates were rising again in 13 EU countries. ▪️The most telling indicator is Britain: ten price cap increases in five years, typical household bills 58% higher than winter 2021/22 levels, with a third consecutive increase expected in January 2027. ▪️EU industry structurally overpays for energy by 2–4 times compared to competitors from the US and China. Europe pays for someone else's conflict in every way at once: through budgets, tariffs, industrial competitiveness, and delayed modernization of its own energy infrastructure. And each new crisis — whether strikes on Ukrainian generation or the Strait of Hormuz blockade — only adds more lines to this bill. #EU #Ukraine #energy 🔻High-resolution infographics 📎Financial distribution (ru; en) 📎Energy resource overpayment (ru; en) 📎Rate dynamics (ru; en @rybar
- 14
- 8
- 4
- 1
- 1
- 1