Will the EU maintain its support for Ukraine in 2027 and what threats lie ahead?

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has a strong chance of becoming France’s next president. In Italy, pro-Ukrainian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni could lose power to left-wing populists following parliamentary elections. Alternatively, even if she remains in office, her ability to support Ukraine could be constrained by other members of a new coalition.

If Ukraine makes it through 2027 without major upheaval, the next challenge will be Romania’s 2028 parliamentary elections. The country’s far-right parties currently enjoy the strongest support among voters and oppose EU assistance to Ukraine. In 2029, elections will take place in Austria and Germany, where the Kremlin-friendly far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and Alternative for Germany (AfD) are also leading their respective party polls.

Read more about how real the threat of the EU halting its support for Ukraine because of the far-right is, and which countries deserve the closest attention in the article by Anatolii Martsynovskyi, European Pravda's editor: Europe’s far-right: can Putin’s friends stop support for Ukraine, and where could the threat come from?

The French presidential election is set to be held in April-May 2027. As things stand, there is frankly little reason to be optimistic about the outcome from Ukraine’s perspective.

According to polling projections, Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the far-right National Rally, could secure up to 38% of the vote in the first round and comfortably defeat any of her closest rivals in the second. Meanwhile, the person currently ranking second in the polls is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, whose stance towards Ukraine is even more hostile than that of the far-right.

Le Pen’s first campaign statements on Ukraine are already entirely in line with Russia’s objectives.

But even if France delivers a surprise, Ukraine will face its next challenge towards the end of the year, with Italy’s parliamentary elections.

The far-right is already in power in Italy, yet Rome has consistently supported Kyiv and sanctions against Russia. Italy’s military assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion is estimated at €3 billion.

However, pressure on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to halt assistance – already considerable – is likely to intensify ahead of the elections. Only 18% of Italians, for example, support continuing military assistance to Kyiv.

Italy’s bilateral military support could well be put on hold during the election campaign, and there are already signs of this happening.

On 20 October, Romania avoided yet another dangerous scenario that could have brought the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) to power. Support for this far-right, openly anti-Ukrainian party currently stands at around 40%.

Romania’s next scheduled parliamentary elections are due in autumn 2028. A far-right victory would undoubtedly create serious problems for Ukraine.

The same applies to Austria, where the far-right and decidedly pro-Russian Freedom Party (FPÖ) could come to power.

The next scheduled parliamentary elections in Austria and Germany are both due in 2029.

That may seem a long way off, but it is difficult to predict what shape Germany’s political establishment and society will be in by then – or whether the so-called firewall will remain in place. This is the informal agreement among Germany’s mainstream parties not to cooperate with the pro-Putin Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Throughout 2026, support for the AfD continued to grow. The far-right overtook Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc, and in September its support reached 30% for the first time. Its rating has since fallen by a few percentage points, but the party still leads national opinion polls.

Of course, there are many more far-right forces in Europe than those mentioned in this article. There are dozens of them across the EU.

Ultimately, however, pro-Russian forces are not limited to the far-right. Bulgaria, under Prime Minister Rumen Radev, currently looks like the most troubling case.