Oh ... well the EU is not actually giving Ukraine much money at all. They are loaning money to them. The reward for Ukrainians' services and lives will be a century of paying back loans to the EU. Still better than being part of Russia, I guess, but.

Why "free will" is critical, is because before Russia attacked, the Ukrainian government had the sense to not in a million years accept such a terrible deal from the EU. As to how free that will really is when constantly under fire with Europe refusing to help it (despite things like the Budapest memorandum) ... is not being discussed.

This has caused a number of EU countries, like Poland and Finland, to decide that a nuclear program to get working ICBMs is a lot cheaper than counting on EU and US goodwill when they're attacked.

Ukraine is also doing a "Chinese-style" nuclear program. The idea is to get every component of ICBMs working. Ukraine, for historical reasons, needs uranium enrichment (it's either that or rebuilding two dozen nuclear reactors). So Ukraine is getting into China's/Japan's position right before they got nukes. Ukraine also has engineers that have actually designed working nuclear bombs. Meaning they're getting to the point that they "don't have nukes, BUT ..."

With the unspoken part being that they're getting to the point where they can have 100 working ICBMs ready to launch by next month.

So we'll have the Ukrainian government, armed with nukes, and a huge involuntary and very unfair war debt to the EU.

Should be interesting negotiations.

But the free will part is critical because without the "free will under pressure" Ukraine would never make itself so incredibly indebted to the EU. And we'll get to see nuclear interest-rate negotations!