EXPLAINER: Brussels pays for Kyiv’s drones and ties its budget aid to a parcel law

A hundred and fifty euros

A parcel at the door

There is a number on this parcel: €150.

It is the threshold below which a parcel ordered from abroad enters Ukraine free of VAT. A phone case. A pair of gloves. A headlamp. The box is light, the tape gives way under a fingernail, and there is nothing extra to pay.

That box is part of ordinary life in a country at war. You order. You wait. You open. The war has not done away with small, cheap pleasures.

On September 25, 2026, that threshold became a European matter. Two commissioners wrote to the speaker of the Rada to demand a series of laws. Among them, the one ending the exemption for international parcels, Euronews reports.

Two truths in the same month

First truth. Brussels pays for Ukraine’s drones. On September 18, the Commission paid out €3.3 billion for drones and missiles.

Second truth. Brussels is holding back part of the money that keeps the Ukrainian state running. A disbursement of €3.9 billion is delayed, Euronews writes, because the Rada is legislating too slowly.

Both are true. The same month. The same lender.

And between them, a box worth less than €150.

The drone is paid for. The box holds up the state.

The letter

Two commissioners, one speaker

The letter is signed by Valdis Dombrovskis and Marta Kos. It is addressed to Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of the Verkhovna Rada. Euronews saw it and described it on the morning of September 25, Brussels time.

It has not been published. So I stick to what Euronews reports of it, and I say so.

A letter from two commissioners to the speaker of a parliament is not a routine email. It is pressure in writing. It went out the very day Zelensky was talking about his winter drones in New York.

The two commissioners write that swift adoption of the necessary laws is essential to secure the available European funding. And to keep Ukraine’s momentum on the road to membership.

The annex

The letter carries an annex of reforms. Euronews gives the list.

Insolvency for small and medium-sized businesses. The civil service. VAT simplification. State aid. Anti-money laundering. Prosecutorial discipline. And the end of the customs exemption for international parcels.

Six projects for specialists. A seventh that touches every online shopper in the country.

A Commission spokesperson summed up the rule: implementing them on time allows the Commission to disburse as planned.

A polite sentence. A hard rule. No disbursement without a vote.

Six laws for the experts. One law for everyone.

Not abandonment, a clock

A timetable, not a withdrawal

Everyone is going to write that Brussels is tightening the screws on Kyiv. That is the surface.

Here is my reading. This letter is not a withdrawal. It is a timetable. It tells the Rada: vote, and the money goes out.

Not abandonment: a clock.

In the same article, the Commission credits Ukraine with a remarkable ability to carry out sweeping reforms under Russian aggression, for more than four years. You do not congratulate someone you are abandoning.

What the letter does not cut

The letter does not touch the drone pocket. That one paid out again on September 18.

Nor does the letter touch the nearly €3 billion approved on September 24. It targets what remains.

Despite the popularity of Chinese platforms, which has already sunk the law twice, Brussels is asking for a vote. That is the double subject of this affair: a country at war that also loves its little parcels.

The hurried reader hears that Brussels is blocking. The letter says Brussels is waiting for a vote.

And yet waiting has a cost, when you are at war and winter has a date.

A clock is not a closed door. It rings.

Two pockets

The drone pocket

To understand the letter, you have to see that European money moves through two pockets.

The Ukraine Support Loan is worth €90 billion, according to the Commission. €60 billion goes to defense procurement. €30 billion goes to the state budget.

The defense pocket paid out on June 30: €3.9 billion for the drone program, the first part of an envelope of about €6 billion.

The defense pocket paid out again on September 18: €3.3 billion for drones and missiles, the fourth disbursement under that strand.

In other words, the two pockets do not mix. A late law does not delay a missile that is already funded.

The Commission specifies that each decision responds to Ukraine’s needs and remains subject to conditions and monitoring.

The state pocket

The other pocket is the one the letter targets. Two envelopes, according to Euronews: €13.5 billion from the support loan and €6.45 billion from the Ukraine Facility. About €20 billion in all.

That money keeps the administration running, the Council of the EU writes. It supports the financial stability of a country paying for a war.

That is the paradox, decoded. The drones do not depend on the parcels. The budget that carries the army does.

Two pockets, one winter.

84 steps out of 95

September 24

The day before the letter, the machinery worked.

On September 24, the Council of the EU approved nearly €3 billion for Ukraine, the eighth regular disbursement under the Ukraine Facility. For the first time, nearly €800 million came from the support loan.

Euronews puts this combined payment at €2.9 billion. The Council also welcomed a contribution from Norway, about €92 million in grants.

The Ukraine Facility entered into force on March 1, 2024. It provides more than €50 billion in grants and loans through 2027, the Council recalls.

Ten more steps

This disbursement rewards 10 steps completed. Ukraine has met 84 of the 95 required so far, or about 88%, according to the Council.

Evropeiska Pravda details some of them. Checking judges’ integrity declarations. A new electricity market operator. A district heating law. Rail safety.

On the ground, these steps are vetted judges, heating networks, safer trains. Things nobody photographs.

Eighty-four out of 95. That is not a country being sent away. It is a country 11 steps short.

And yet the next day’s letter is not only about judges and rails. It is also about parcels.

Eighty-four steps cleared. The box is still on the table.

No, twice

Temu and AliExpress

The parcel law has already failed twice in the Rada, Euronews writes. Those failures earned it a rebuke from Brussels.

The reason, according to the same article: the popularity of Temu and AliExpress in the country.

Evropeiska Pravda traces the two failures. A first draft, No.12360, rejected. A second, No.15460, defeated at second reading and sent back for revision.

As recently as September 1, Ekonomichna Pravda reports, the text gathered only 194 votes of the 226 needed.

Who in the chamber wants to be the lawmaker behind the Temu tax?

September 16, 267 votes

Then, on September 16, the Rada passed the parcel package at first reading, according to Ukraine’s finance ministry. 267 votes in favor, one against, according to Evropeiska Pravda.

No twice. Then yes, almost as a bloc.

Nothing changed in the box. Everything suggests the calendar did.

A second reading remains. The Rada is on recess until mid-October, Euronews writes. Its speaker says he is ready to call a special session as soon as the text is ready.

No twice, then 267 yeses. The last reading is missing.

What the law says

VAT under the €150 threshold

Let’s decode the text itself.

Today, a parcel worth less than €150 ordered from a foreign marketplace comes in without VAT. The reform removes that exemption, according to the finance ministry.

The planned rate is 20%, Evropeiska Pravda specifies. Non-commercial parcels would stay exempt up to €45, according to the ministry.

The model is European. The ministry speaks of a Ukrainian equivalent of the IOSS, the EU’s one-stop shop for imports.

How much is the condition worth? Euronews speaks of a delayed disbursement of €3.9 billion. Evropeiska Pravda writes €3.7 billion, the second macro-financial tranche of the €90 billion loan. The ministry says about €4 billion. I keep the range.

July 2027

The ministry expects about 10 billion hryvnias in revenue the following year, for defense needs.

But the new rules will not take effect before July 2027. Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko cites the technical difficulty of an automatic collection system.

In other words, the law does not tax tomorrow morning’s box. It taxes the one from summer 2027, and it unlocks the money for fall 2026.

Read the date again.

July 2027.

The tax pays in 2027. The condition pays now.

October money

Zelensky’s calendar

That same September 25, in New York, Volodymyr Zelensky gave reporters his own calendar, the Kyiv Independent reports.

If Ukraine does not order and pay for its drones in October and November, he said, it will have serious problems in January and February.

October. November. January. February.

In October, orders have to go in. In October, payments have to go out. In October, the Rada has to sit. In October, it has to vote.

The Rada returns in mid-October. The tax brings in money from July 2027. And yet the drones are ordered now.

The threshold turned clock

This is where the €150 threshold changes nature.

It no longer measures the price of a box. It measures the time between a special session and a drone contract.

In January, somewhere on the front line, a pilot will open a crate with numb fingers and count what is inside. He will know nothing about Temu. He will know what is missing.

He did not vote on the tax. If the budget falters in January, he is the one who will feel it first.

A hundred and fifty euros in Kyiv. A winter on the line.

Brussels has a point

The unfairness the tax corrects

Now the part that pro-Ukrainian readers, myself first, do not like to hear.

I grant it without hedging. In the two commissioners’ place, I would have signed the same letter.

Brussels is right on the substance. Ukraine’s finance minister says it himself: the reform ends an unfairness toward honest Ukrainian businesses.

They pay VAT. The foreign parcel does not. That is not an accounting detail. It is distorted competition.

The International Monetary Fund makes it a condition too. US$700 million depends on it, according to Ekonomichna Pravda. And the model chosen is that of the Union Ukraine wants to join.

A country that asks for help and keeps an exemption for foreign platforms makes its own task harder. In front of the European taxpayers who fund that help, the argument is hard to defend.

Two halves of €45 billion

Zelensky asked for flexibility. He proposed bringing forward to 2026 funds planned for 2027, according to Euronews.

The loan is split into two halves of €45 billion. Bringing one forward means thinning out the other. And Ukraine already sees a US$32.6 billion hole coming next year.

That is true. And it does not change this: a fair condition can land at the wrong time.

Brussels is right about the tax. Winter does not read annexes.

Who pays

The shopper and the shopkeeper

Let’s decode who pays what, and when.

There is the Ukrainian shopper. From July 2027 at the earliest, a box under €150 will carry VAT.

There is the Ukrainian merchant. He already pays VAT. He will stop losing out to a parcel that does not.

There is the lawmaker. He votes for an unpopular tax, or he votes for a delay.

I admit I understand the shopper. I have clicked on those small prices from far away too, and waited for the doorbell. Nobody feels guilty over a phone case.

The soldier

There is the soldier. Part of the budget hole, according to the Kyiv Independent, comes from military pay.

There is the drone pilot of January. A third of the hole, maybe more, goes to the machines of the first quarter, according to Zelensky.

The one who shops will pay in 2027. The one who fights cannot wait until 2027.

What is a popular vote worth in October?

The shopper pays later. The soldier is already paying.

Twenty-seven billion

A third for drones

Zelensky’s number, on September 25: a budget deficit of US$27 billion, mostly tied to defense, drones and missiles included, according to the Kyiv Independent.

About a third, maybe a little more, goes to drones for January, February and March, he said.

Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi had warned earlier in September. Parliament’s delays could put at risk a large share of the US$29.5 billion in international financing expected.

The hole after that

And behind 2026, there is 2027. Another hole, US$32.6 billion, Euronews writes.

Twenty-seven. Twenty-nine and a half. Thirty-two point six.

Put end to end, the two holes top US$59 billion.

Next to that, 10 billion hryvnias a year, from 2027, from the parcel tax.

The tax does not fill the hole. It opens the door to the money that does.

That is the real proportion. Ten billion hryvnias do not save a budget. A vote unlocks billions of euros.

The tax is small. The door it opens is not.

What the letter cannot do

The flexibility requested

An honest explainer also says where the tool stops working.

The letter cannot vote in the Rada’s place. The letter cannot move mid-October forward. The letter cannot stop an air-raid alert from emptying the chamber. The letter cannot turn a 2027 tax into October money.

Zelensky said it his own way. He asked for flexibility on the timetable, pointing out that the strikes weigh on the Rada’s work, according to Euronews.

He called his exchanges with Ursula von der Leyen entirely positive, while Bloomberg described them as tense, the same outlet reports.

A text no one can read

And the letter itself remains private. All that is known is who signed it, who received it, one sentence and an annex.

No deadline has been made public.

If the special session drags, if an alert hits on the morning of a vote, if the recess runs to the end…

A letter does not vote. It reminds people who does.

The clock is in Kyiv

Paid on the 18th, approved on the 24th

Here is my conclusion, and it is about what the letter is for, not about a culprit.

Brussels is not dropping Kyiv. It paid for drones on September 18. It approved nearly €3 billion on the 24th. It is waiting for a vote to release the next €3.9 billion.

The September 25 letter serves a single purpose: to make the special session more likely than the recess.

The key is no longer in Brussels. It is in the chamber in Kyiv, between the popularity of a box and the calendar of a front line.

Our own little parcels

The €150 threshold opened this text as a price. It closes it as a date.

We like to say that Ukraine is fighting for us too.

And what tax on our own little parcels would we agree to vote for in the middle of a war, if our soldiers’ winter depended on it?

The Rada has to answer before January.

The drones are paid for. The budget clock is ringing in Kyiv.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Council of the EU, statement via EU Neighbours East — nearly €3 billion approved, 84 steps out of 95, September 24, 2026
• European Commission — €3.3 billion disbursed for Ukraine’s defense, September 18, 2026
• Ministry of Finance of Ukraine — international parcels bill passed at first reading, September 16, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Euronews — the Dombrovskis and Kos letter to the Rada, September 25, 2026
• The Kyiv Independent — Zelensky, the US$27 billion deficit and winter drones, September 25, 2026
• Evropeiska Pravda — 267 votes for the tax on parcels under €150, September 16, 2026