ANALYSIS: The PURL program—the ingenious solution that makes Europe pay for Ukraine

Longtime participants in the program since day one

The United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Lithuania are among the program’s most consistent contributors, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has repeatedly thanked them for their ongoing financial commitment. Japan joined the mechanism on May 29, 2026, as the twenty-eighth contributing country, with an initial commitment of $14.7 million for non-lethal equipment.

This circle of contributors illustrates a broader Western solidarity that extends far beyond European borders, now including Indo-Pacific partners directly affected by the need to deter authoritarian regimes, whether Russian, Chinese, or North Korean.

Notable Absentees from the Initiative

Six Alliance countries are notably absent from the list of direct contributors to PURL: France, Italy, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. These absences reflect a variety of political choices, ranging from a preference for direct bilateral aid to political reluctance toward military support for Kyiv.

I cannot help but note the irony of seeing Turkey—host of the Ankara summit—absent from this specific mechanism. Hosting the “family photo” costs nothing; financing the interceptors, apparently, is another story.

An Ambitious Ukrainian Goal for 2026

President Volodymyr Zelensky has set a target of $15 billion through PURL for 2026 alone—an amount that would far exceed the funds committed to date. Twenty-six allied countries have already collectively provided more than $4 billion since the initiative’s launch, a pace that will need to accelerate significantly to meet Kyiv’s target.

Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, a draft statement mentions a commitment of seventy billion euros for military assistance to Ukraine in 2026, with a comparable amount envisaged for 2027, bringing the total to approximately one hundred forty billion euros over two years, according to preparatory documents reviewed by several media outlets.

Coordination with the 90-billion-euro European loan

A substantial portion of this funding—approximately 60 billion euros—would come from the 90 billion euro loan already committed by the European Union, supplemented by an additional NATO commitment of approximately 80 billion euros. This complex financial architecture illustrates the difficulty of coordinating European and transatlantic instruments to maintain a stable and predictable flow of aid.

I believe that this multi-layered financial structure, however necessary it may be, reveals a structural weakness of the West: the inability to create a single, simple, and sustainable instrument to finance Ukraine’s defense without having to devise a different arrangement at every summit.

A Promising Start Followed by a Funding Shortfall

The program celebrated its first anniversary in early July 2026, following its official launch in July 2025. The year 2025 ended with a confirmed total of $4.3 billion committed, a solid start. But the first months of 2026—from January through April—saw only an additional $700 million to $1 billion committed, revealing a concerning slowdown in the pace of funding.

This funding shortfall at the start of the year directly contributed to the shortages of Patriot interceptors observed during the Russian attacks in June and July 2026, illustrating the fragility of the mechanism, which depends entirely on the renewed goodwill of contributors, without any automatic multi-year budgetary guarantee.

The Spring and Summer Surge

In response to this slowdown, a surge in contributions began in June 2026, notably including a new $1 billion package announced through the Ramstein Group, hailed by Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov as a crucial step toward filling the gaps that had accumulated since the start of the year.

I see this cycle of slowdown followed by a surge as evidence of a deeper structural problem: the West does not provide stable funding to Ukraine; rather, it reacts to emergencies, often after blood has already been shed.

Why Washington Chose This Arrangement

Before the PURL program was established, U.S. military aid to Ukraine was primarily channeled through direct budget allocations approved by Congress, a process that became politically more difficult after Donald Trump returned to the White House. The PURL program was designed specifically as an alternative that would allow for continued deliveries without relying on a congressional vote that was periodically contested.

This solution offers the obvious political advantage of allowing the U.S. administration to continue supplying military equipment while publicly asserting that it does not directly fund Ukraine’s war effort—a semantic distinction that carries enormous weight in the current domestic U.S. debate.

The Risks of a Mechanism Without Lasting Legal Guarantees

Unlike a budget program passed by Congress, PURL remains a political arrangement that could theoretically be modified or abandoned at any time by a U.S. executive decision, without requiring legislative approval. This legal fragility poses a structural risk that European capitals cannot ignore in their long-term planning.

I believe Europe is deluding itself if it thinks PURL constitutes a lasting guarantee. It is a political mechanism, revocable by nature, and the recent history of the Trump administration should prompt the utmost caution regarding its longevity.

A Multi-Tiered Aid Framework

Alongside PURL, the JUMPSTART program complements the Western military financing architecture, with distinct yet complementary objectives and disbursement mechanisms. While this proliferation of financial instruments adds to administrative complexity, it allows for diversification of support channels and helps mitigate the risks associated with reliance on a single mechanism.

Preparatory discussions for the Ankara summit explicitly address the coordination between these various programs, with the stated goal of presenting allied leaders with a coherent and transparent financial framework for the next two years of military support to Ukraine.

The Challenge of Simplifying an Already Complex System

This desire for coherence, however, comes up against the political reality of twenty-eight contributing countries, each with its own budgetary constraints, its own electoral calendars, and its own sensitivities regarding military support for Ukraine, making any radical simplification of the system politically difficult to negotiate.

I note, not without a touch of irony, that the West excels at creating acronyms to fund Ukraine but struggles to establish a single, simple, and sustainable mechanism. The bureaucracy of solidarity, too, has its own costs.

Europe pays, America manufactures and makes the decisions

The PURL mechanism illustrates, in an almost caricatured way, the persistent asymmetry in the transatlantic relationship when it comes to defense. Europe provides the funding, but it is Washington—through NATO’s military command—that sets the priorities and selects the equipment to be delivered, thereby maintaining U.S. strategic control over the entire process.

This asymmetry is not new, but PURL makes it particularly visible by formalizing it within an explicit institutional mechanism, rather than allowing it to be diluted in the usual complexity of bilateral defense agreements between Western allies.

A Revealer of the Limits of European Strategic Autonomy

This observation reinforces the long-standing but still relevant argument that Europe remains structurally dependent on the U.S. defense industry for its most critical systems—particularly missile defense—despite years of official rhetoric about European strategic autonomy.

I say this with a certain weariness: Europe has been talking about strategic autonomy for years, but every major crisis reveals that it remains incapable of producing on its own the missile defense systems it needs most. PURL is not a solution to this problem; it is merely a Band-Aid for this dependence.

A growing order book

For U.S. defense contractors, PURL represents a substantial and predictable order book, funded by creditworthy partners rather than by a federal budget subject to the vagaries of congressional negotiations. This relative stability allows manufacturers to plan more confidently for increases in their production capacity, particularly for Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, for which global demand is skyrocketing.

This dynamic directly benefits the U.S. defense economy, creating a cycle in which European funding indirectly supports industrial jobs and technological innovation in the United States—an argument that the Trump administration is quick to highlight publicly.

The Challenge of Scaling Up Production

Despite this sustained demand, ramping up production of Patriot systems remains limited by real industrial constraints, particularly the availability of specialized components and skilled labor—a bottleneck that partly explains the persistent delivery delays despite the available funding.

I believe that this industrial limitation, rather than a lack of political will, accounts for a large part of the current shortages. You can allocate all the money in the world, but that won’t make a missile factory spring up any faster.

Aid Deemed Too Slow by Kyiv

Despite its relative success, the PURL program has been the subject of recurring criticism from Ukrainian officials, who consider the pace of delivery still too slow given the intensity of current Russian strikes. The time lag between the announcement of a funded package and its actual delivery on the ground can be as long as several weeks—a delay deemed excessive in the context of near-daily attacks.

This criticism is accompanied by repeated calls for administrative streamlining of the process for selecting and delivering arms shipments, in order to reduce the time between a contributing country’s financial commitment and the actual arrival of the equipment on Ukrainian soil.

The Debate Over the Mechanism’s Political Conditionality

Other analysts question the mechanism’s implicit political conditionality, fearing that a future administration might use its control over the selection of PURL packages as a tool for exerting diplomatic pressure on Ukraine, in a context where peace negotiations remain a possibility regularly raised by Washington.

I share this concern. A mechanism that gives a single capital the power to decide which arms packages are sent and which are held back is, by its very nature, a tool for exerting political pressure. We must honestly acknowledge this rather than deny it.

What Allied Leaders Must Decide

The NATO summit in Ankara must now resolve several key issues for the future of PURL: the exact level of financial commitment for 2026 and 2027, the distribution of costs among the current 28 contributing countries, and the possible integration of new partners beyond the traditional Atlantic circle.

The preparatory documents reviewed suggest that Allied leaders will seek to formalize a more predictable multi-year commitment to avoid a repeat of the funding shortfall observed in early 2026, which directly contributed to critical shortages in Ukraine’s missile defense capabilities.

An opportunity to address identified shortcomings

This summit also represents an opportunity to strengthen logistical coordination mechanisms between PURL and other funding instruments—notably JUMPSTART and the 90-billion-euro European loan—in order to reduce the administrative complexity that is currently slowing down deliveries.

I want to believe that this summit will be an opportunity to address PURL’s shortcomings rather than merely announcing new impressive figures without reforming the system that failed earlier this year.

A Test of the Sustainability of Europe’s Commitment

Beyond the numbers and technical mechanisms, PURL serves as a real-world test of Europe’s ability to shoulder a growing share of the financial burden of its own security, in the face of a U.S. administration that is becoming increasingly explicit about its expectations in this regard.

The success or failure of this mechanism in the coming months will largely determine the future credibility of the North Atlantic Alliance in the eyes of its adversaries—Russia foremost among them—who are closely watching for any signs of division or waning Western support for Ukraine.

A Precedent for Future European Defense

This precedent could also serve as a model for other forms of transatlantic financial cooperation in defense—far beyond the Ukrainian issue alone—as Europe seeks to balance its historical dependence on the U.S. defense industry.

I believe that history will judge PURL not only on its immediate effectiveness for Ukraine, but on what it reveals about Europe’s ability—or inability—to sustainably finance its own collective security.

A deterrent that extends beyond the Ukrainian front

The strengthening of the PURL mechanism must also be viewed in the context of global strategic competition with China—whose regional ambitions in the Pacific have once again been on full display recently—and with North Korea, whose direct military support for Russia further complicates the Western security equation.

A failure of Western funding for Ukraine would send a dangerous signal to these authoritarian regimes, suggesting that Western resolve is crumbling under budgetary pressure—a message that neither Washington nor European capitals can afford to convey in the current geopolitical climate.

Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Western Deterrence

This observation reinforces the argument that the success of Ukraine’s funding through PURL extends far beyond Ukrainian interests themselves, becoming a global test of credibility for the entire Western deterrence posture in the face of the axis formed by Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang.

I repeat this because it is essential: what is at stake with PURL is not merely a matter of Patriot missiles delivered to Kyiv. It is a message sent simultaneously to Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang regarding the true strength of Western deterrence.

What Previous Budget Cycles Have Taught Us

The history of Western support for Ukraine since 2022 has been marked by cycles similar to the one observed with PURL: a strong initial commitment, followed by a slowdown, and then a surge triggered by a visible military crisis. The U.S. aid packages passed by Congress before 2025 had already followed this same pattern, with months of legislative gridlock followed by massive releases of funds under pressure from the urgency of the situation.

This recurring pattern suggests that the problem is not specific to the PURL mechanism itself, but reflects a broader structural characteristic of Western support for Ukraine, which struggles to stabilize into a predictable rhythm independent of the political and media cycles of each contributing capital.

Why This Time Might Be Different

NATO officials assert that the experience gained over the past year of PURL’s operation now makes it possible to anticipate Ukraine’s needs more effectively, thanks to better coordination between the allied military command and U.S. defense contractors, theoretically reducing the risk of supply disruptions.

I want to believe this promise of improvement, but recent history prompts me to be cautious. We’ve been promised better coordination at every summit for the past four years, and yet critical shortages continue to occur at the worst possible moments for Ukrainian defenders.

What the Program’s First Anniversary Has Shown

One year after its launch, the PURL mechanism has demonstrated its ability to maintain a significant flow of U.S. arms to Ukraine despite political turmoil in Washington. Its structural flaws—notably the funding gap in early 2026—have had direct and documented human consequences on the ground, serving as a reminder that no financial mechanism, however ingenious, can replace a stable and sustained political commitment.

The Real Stake at the Ankara Summit

The Ankara summit offers a concrete opportunity to address these flaws and transform an emergency mechanism into a sustainable instrument for funding Ukraine’s defense. The West cannot afford another disruption in supplies like the one seen earlier this year, lest it pay for this delay with Ukrainian lives.

I conclude this analysis as I began it: PURL is neither a miracle nor a scam; it is an imperfect political compromise that saves Ukrainian lives despite its flaws. History will judge the West on its ability to correct these flaws before they cost even more lives.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist