The September 2026 update of the European Peace Facility (EPF), which supports defence and security in the EU and partner countries, reflects a broader transformation of Europe’s approach to security. The Facility is becoming more differentiated and increasingly oriented towards sustainable military capability at the same time as Europe is assuming greater responsibility for its own defence. The next stage should build on this progress by tailoring specialised EU instruments to address different vulnerabilities and ensuring that their combined effects strengthen Europe’s capacity to shape its security environment.
Russia’s war against Ukraine and the wider deterioration of the European security environment have profoundly changed the demands placed on the EU’s security and defence instruments. The evolution of the EPF is one of the clearest manifestations of this adaptation. Its significance lies not only in its increased financial scale, but in the widening range of military requirements it can address: from immediate equipment and ammunition needs to sustainable capability, defence production and support for EU military missions and operations.
This evolution deserves recognition. The EPF now has a financial ceiling of over €17 billion. The EU has mobilised €6.1 billion through the Facility for military support to Ukraine and the EU Military Assistance Mission, while €3.4 billion generated by windfall profits on immobilised Russian assets has been channelled towards ammunition, drones and air defence. Of this amount, €1.5 billion has been dedicated to strengthening Ukraine’s defence-industrial capacity. Moldova has become the second-largest beneficiary of EPF assistance; Armenia has received additional support; and new measures have been adopted for partners including Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania.
These developments also reveal an increasingly differentiated use of the instrument. Ukraine’s requirements centre on sustaining and regenerating military capability. Moldova’s assistance now includes mid-range air defence. Armenia receives more limited military support alongside civilian EU engagement against hybrid vulnerabilities. In parts of the Western Balkans, EPF assistance increasingly supports interoperability and partners’ capacity to contribute to European security operations. These are not variations of a single security model but responses to different strategic circumstances.
The EPF, moreover, is not exclusively an instrument for supporting partners. Its Operations Pillar finances the common costs of EU military CSDP missions and operations, including the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine), the EU military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR Althea), the EU naval operation protecting freedom of navigation in the Red Sea (EUNAVFOR ASPIDES), and the EU naval operation focused on maritime security and counter-piracy in the Western Indian Ocean (EUNAVFOR ATALANTA). The Facility therefore operates across two related dimensions of European security: strengthening partners and enabling the Union itself to act militarily.
Both dimensions are becoming more important. Russia’s war has forced security requirements beyond the Ukrainian battlefield; hybrid operations and sabotage affect critical infrastructure inside the Union; transport networks connecting Ukraine with EU territory have acquired strategic importance; European defence industries face substantially greater production requirements; and US policy increasingly expects European allies to carry more responsibility for conventional defence and for sustaining Ukraine.
The September update should therefore be read not simply as evidence of the EPF’s institutional development, but as part of Europe’s wider adaptation to a security environment in which military capability, industrial capacity, infrastructure, resilience and external partnerships are increasingly interconnected.
From Military Assistance to Sustainable Capability
Ukraine has been the principal driver of the EPF’s transformation. Europe’s initial response to Russia’s full-scale invasion necessarily concentrated on immediate requirements. Ukraine needed weapons and ammunition, and Member States supplied substantial quantities from existing inventories. The EPF provided an essential mechanism for mobilising and reimbursing this assistance.
Four years of war have changed the requirement. Sustained defence cannot depend predominantly on transferring existing stocks. Equipment must be produced and maintained, ammunition replenished, personnel trained and technology continuously adapted to battlefield developments.
The growing emphasis on Ukrainian defence production is therefore particularly significant. Directing €1.5 billion to Ukraine’s defence industry strengthens its regenerative capability rather than simply replacing equipment already consumed. This development increasingly overlaps with wider European defence policy, including the European Defence Industry Programme, which seeks closer integration of Ukrainian production into the European defence technological and industrial base.
The relationship is becoming reciprocal. Ukraine has accumulated operational and technological experience in drones, electronic warfare, air defence and rapid battlefield adaptation that is directly relevant to European defence. European support strengthens Ukraine’s capacity for self-defence, while Ukrainian production, technology and operational knowledge can contribute to Europe’s own capability development.
The September 2026 Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting in Kyiv offered a useful indication of how these requirements are converging. Its relevance lies less in individual interventions than in the strategic issues addressed across discussions involving Ukrainian political and military leaders, senior European security advisers, US legislators and representatives of the defence and technology sectors. Military capability, protection of infrastructure and society, defence production, economic pressure on Russia, credible security guarantees and the prospects for diplomacy increasingly appeared as interdependent rather than separate policy questions.
This relationship is directly relevant to the EPF. Military assistance is neither an alternative to diplomacy nor simply an emergency mechanism maintained until negotiations begin. The capacity to defend territory, protect infrastructure and population, sustain military production and deny an aggressor the expectation of eventual military success helps determine the strategic environment in which diplomacy takes place.
The same applies to security guarantees. Ukraine’s armed forces, defence-industrial capacity and integration with European partners are part of the material foundation upon which any sustainable security arrangement will have to rest. Ukraine is therefore developing not only as a recipient of European security assistance but as a potential contributor to European security through its military experience, technology and defence production.
A Changing Transatlantic Division of Responsibility
The importance of this development is amplified by the changing distribution of responsibilities within the transatlantic relationship. The United States remains indispensable to European deterrence and continues to provide capabilities that Europe cannot rapidly replace. The 2026 US National Defense Strategy, however, places allied burden-sharing among its principal lines of effort and argues that European allies should assume primary responsibility for conventional defence in Europe, with critical but more limited US support. This represents more than another dispute over defence expenditure. It reflects a redistribution of strategic responsibility intended to give Washington greater flexibility to concentrate resources on other priorities while expecting European allies to generate more of the conventional capabilities required in their own theatre. Ukraine already demonstrates how such a redistribution can operate. Under NATO’s Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), European allies and other partners finance critical US-produced equipment for Ukraine. By September 2026, more than $10 billion had been allocated through PURL and US Foreign Military Sales, including support for air-defence capabilities, according to NATO’s September 2026 assessment.
This does not amount to US disengagement from European security. The United States remains an essential component of deterrence and a provider of critical capabilities. But Europe is increasingly expected to carry a greater financial and conventional military burden within that relationship.
The implications for the EPF are significant. Stronger European military-assistance mechanisms, expanded defence production and closer integration with Ukrainian industrial capacity are no longer requirements generated solely by the immediate demands of the war. They are also part of Europe’s adaptation to a transatlantic relationship in which its ability to finance, produce and sustain security will carry greater strategic weight.
The Security Environment Does Not Stop at the EU Border
Greater European responsibility also requires a broader understanding of the environment in which military support is generated and delivered. Recent incidents demonstrate that infrastructure connecting Europe with Ukraine has itself become part of the contested security space.
On 4 August 2026, an explosives-laden drone was discovered in a restricted area of Leipzig/Halle Airport, close to Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft. In September, the German Federal Government attributed the attempted attack to Russia following assessments by German security authorities and consultations with European partners. Chancellor Friedrich Merz subsequently stated that the operation had been prepared in Russia over several months and that serious damage and casualties had been avoided largely by chance. Russia denies responsibility. Leipzig/Halle is critical transport infrastructure and a major European cargo hub, while Ukrainian Antonov aircraft have operated from it since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The incident therefore illustrates the vulnerability of infrastructure that also contributes to the logistical relationship between Europe and Ukraine.
The Russian drone strike near Yahodyn immediately after the YES meeting illustrated the problem from the Ukrainian side of the EU border. On 13 September, a Russian drone struck a train at Yahodyn station close to Poland. A special train carrying European figures returning from YES had passed through the area shortly beforehand after Ukrainian railway authorities adjusted its movement because of the drone threat. Ukrainian Railways suggested that the diplomatic train might have been the intended target, although this has not been independently established.
The strategic relevance of the incident does not depend on proving whom Russia intended to hit. Railway infrastructure at the Ukrainian-Polish border supports civilian mobility, trade, diplomatic movement and the logistical connection between Ukraine and the European Union.
Leipzig and Yahodyn are different cases: one an attempted hybrid attack inside an EU and NATO member state attributed to Russia by the German government, the other a Russian wartime strike on Ukrainian territory. Together, however, they demonstrate that the infrastructure connecting Ukraine with the Union forms a strategic space whose vulnerabilities do not correspond neatly to the EU’s external border.
Air defence, military mobility, logistics and critical-infrastructure resilience therefore increasingly intersect. Some of these requirements fall within the military sphere; others – including civilian infrastructure protection, counter-sabotage and cybersecurity – require different national and European instruments. The relevant policy challenge is to ensure that military capability is not undermined by vulnerabilities in the infrastructure and institutions required to sustain it.
The EU’s Strategic Approach to the Black Sea Region already points in this direction. It connects regional security with critical-infrastructure protection and military mobility, including ports, railways, roads and airports capable of supporting both civilian connectivity and strategic requirements. This is important because it recognises that military capability and the infrastructure required to sustain it cannot be planned in isolation.
Different Vulnerabilities, Different Instruments
The development of the EPF outside Ukraine demonstrates why European security policy requires differentiation rather than a uniform assistance model.
Moldova has become the second-largest beneficiary of EPF assistance. In July 2026, the Council approved a €120 million EPF measure for a mid-range air-defence system, bringing total EPF support to €317 million. The measure builds on earlier support for air surveillance and air defence and is intended to improve operational effectiveness and civilian protection. At the same time, EUPM Moldova addresses crisis management and hybrid threats, including cybersecurity and foreign information manipulation and interference. Its mandate has been extended until 31 May 2027. The division of labour is clear: the EPF develops specific military capabilities, while the civilian mission addresses vulnerabilities for which military assistance is not the appropriate instrument.
Armenia illustrates a different configuration. The January 2026 EPF measure provides €20 million to strengthen military logistics, civilian protection in crises and emergencies, resilience and interoperability, bringing total EPF assistance to €30 million. Its scale and purpose are deliberately limited. This corresponds to a security environment being altered by progress towards an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace settlement. A durable settlement would reduce the risk of renewed conventional interstate conflict, but it would not eliminate Armenia’s exposure to cyber threats, foreign information manipulation, illicit financial flows and other forms of external pressure. The EU Partnership Mission in Armenia, formally established on 21 April 2026 and launched on 13 July, addresses precisely these vulnerabilities through strategic advice, technical expertise and institutional capacity-building. The existing EU Mission in Armenia separately continues its monitoring, confidence-building and human-security functions. Armenia therefore illustrates an important point: peace does not eliminate security requirements; it changes their composition. European engagement can adjust accordingly, using limited military support for defined defence needs while civilian instruments address vulnerabilities that have become relatively more important.
Georgia presents a more difficult relationship between political conditionality and security exposure.
Between 2021 and 2023, the EU allocated almost €63 million through the EPF to support the modernisation of Georgia’s defence forces with non-lethal equipment, supplies and services. Adoption of the planned 2024 assistance measure was subsequently suspended because of democratic backsliding. Such conditionality is legitimate: security cooperation cannot be entirely detached from the democratic and institutional principles underpinning Georgia’s relationship with the EU. The military environment surrounding Georgia, however, continues to evolve independently of EU-Georgia political relations. Russia occupies Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia and maintains military forces and infrastructure in both territories. Since 2022, this presence has existed within a Black Sea environment transformed by the war against Ukraine, including rapid developments in drones and electronic warfare, attacks against infrastructure and logistics, and the increased strategic importance of connections between Europe and the South Caucasus.
On 10 September, large-scale operational-tactical exercises were announced for 12–16 October in occupied Abkhazia, involving permanent-readiness units, reservists and personnel of the Russian Armed Forces. Artillery, armoured vehicles and aviation are to participate, with particular attention to high-technology weapons, command-and-control systems, electronic warfare and methods characteristic of contemporary combat operations. The announcement does not constitute evidence that Russia is preparing a new offensive against Georgia. Its significance is different: it demonstrates that the occupied territories remain operational elements of Russia’s military posture in the Black Sea region and that forces there are training in capabilities and methods increasingly central to contemporary warfare. Georgia’s relevance therefore extends beyond the unresolved consequences of the August 2008 Russian aggression. The country occupies an important position on the eastern Black Sea and along transport and energy routes connecting Europe with the South Caucasus, the Caspian and Central Asia. Russian military activity in occupied Abkhazia occurs within the same strategic geography in which the EU is increasing its attention to Black Sea security, infrastructure protection, military mobility and east-west connectivity.
The EU consequently needs to preserve credible democratic conditionality while distinguishing relations with a government from Europe’s longer-term interest in the sovereignty, security and resilience of the country. Where political circumstances constrain direct military assistance, engagement supporting societal resilience, independent institutions and appropriate forms of cyber and infrastructure resilience can remain strategically relevant without weakening conditionality.
The Western Balkans present yet another model.
In May 2026, the Council adopted a third €15 million bilateral EPF assistance measure for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its objectives include strengthening military capability and operational readiness, improving interoperability and increasing Bosnia and Herzegovina’s potential to contribute to EU CSDP missions and operations and international coalitions.
Albania received a further €21 million measure in the same month, bringing total EPF support to €49 million. Here too, capability development is explicitly connected with Albania’s potential contribution to EU CSDP missions and international coalitions.
These measures differ fundamentally from assistance to Ukraine. They support countries progressively integrated into European security structures and increasingly capable of contributing to them. The EPF’s Operations pillar adds another dimension: EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina is itself financed through the Facility. The EPF can therefore support both an EU military presence and the development of partner capabilities within the same regional security environment.
The comparison across these cases is instructive. Ukraine requires sustained war-fighting and production capacity; Moldova combines specific military capability with hybrid resilience; Armenia’s changing environment favours limited military assistance alongside civilian security instruments; Georgia requires a distinction between political conditionality and enduring strategic exposure; and the Western Balkans increasingly connect capability-building with interoperability and security contribution. The value lies precisely in not forcing these different circumstances into a single model.
From Differentiated Instruments to Strategic Effect
The next stage is therefore less about expanding the EPF than about ensuring that specialised European instruments produce compatible strategic effects. The Facility should remain focused on military and defence functions. Critical-infrastructure protection cannot be reduced to military assistance; Leipzig and Yahodyn demonstrate the need to protect the transport and logistical networks through which European support and economic activity move. Connectivity policy has a related but distinct role. Global Gateway investments should not become defence programmes, but in strategically exposed regions transport, energy and digital infrastructure should incorporate resilience and redundancy, particularly where networks are relevant to wider European connectivity or military mobility.
Enlargement also remains a distinct political and institutional process governed by conditionality. Yet the progressive integration of Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkans inevitably have security consequences. Defence preparedness, institutional resilience and infrastructure protection increasingly affect the security of the Union into which these countries are integrating.
Diplomacy operates within the same environment without becoming a military function. The discussions in Kyiv illustrated the connection: the prospects for sustainable negotiations are influenced by military resilience, economic sustainability, external support and an aggressor’s assessment of whether continued coercion is likely to produce a more favourable outcome. European defence instruments do not substitute for diplomacy; they can help create conditions in which diplomacy has a greater prospect of producing a sustainable result.
The organising principle should therefore be straightforward: identify the vulnerability, employ the instrument best suited to address it, and assess the combined strategic effect. This preserves institutional specialisation while reducing the risk that progress in one field is weakened by vulnerabilities in another. The changing transatlantic environment makes this more consequential. Europe is being asked to assume greater responsibility for its security at the same time as the security challenge itself is becoming more complex. The answer cannot be expenditure alone. Europe’s growing financial and military commitment needs to translate into sustainable capability, protected infrastructure, resilient institutions and partners increasingly able to contribute to European security.
Conclusion
The September 2026 update of the European Peace Facility demonstrates how far the EU has adapted under the pressure of war and strategic competition. The Facility has grown substantially, but the more important development is qualitative: it is increasingly capable of supporting different military requirements across very different strategic environments while continuing to finance EU military missions and operations.
This is significant progress. Ukraine demonstrates the movement towards sustainable capability and defence production. Moldova and Armenia show how military assistance can operate alongside specialised civilian instruments. Georgia exposes the tension between legitimate political conditionality and an enduring strategic environment shaped by Russian military presence. The Western Balkans demonstrate how assistance can develop from security provision towards interoperability and contribution. The Operations pillar connects these external relationships with the Union’s own capacity to act.
At the same time, Leipzig and Yahodyn cases show that the distinction between supporting partners and protecting Europe is becoming less clear at the operational level. The infrastructure through which Europe sustains Ukraine can itself become vulnerable to Russian military or hybrid activity. The changing US approach adds another dimension: Europe will increasingly have to finance and generate more of the conventional capabilities required for its security while maintaining the transatlantic relationship and access to critical American capabilities.
The appropriate response is not to transform the EPF into an all-purpose security instrument. Its specialised military and defence function is one of its strengths. The requirement is to make that function more effective while ensuring that defence-industrial policy, civilian security missions, infrastructure and connectivity policies, enlargement and diplomacy address the vulnerabilities for which they are respectively designed.
The evolution captured in the September update suggests that the EU is already moving in this direction. The next step is to ensure that differentiated instruments do more than operate alongside one another: their combined effects should strengthen Europe’s capacity to sustain its defence, support exposed partners and shape a security environment for which Europeans are assuming greater responsibility.