Speaking in Strasbourg at her annual State of the European Union address before a plenary session of the European Parliament, she announced that the European Union is preparing its strongest-ever support package for Ukraine to navigate the upcoming winter.
Von der Leyen acknowledged that the looming winter season will present severe challenges, though she emphasized that Russian drone strikes and North Korean ballistic missiles cannot break the Ukrainian spirit of resistance.
"The people of Ukraine are fighting for what matters," she stressed.
"They are fighting for the survival of their country, for their identity, and for their freedom. They are also fighting for our freedom and our right to self-determination. Our task remains to support Ukraine to the absolute best of our ability."
Von der Leyen outlined the three pillars of the European Union’s support strategy:
Unprecedented winter energy relief: Providing massive humanitarian aid in coordination with international partners to fortify and restore Ukraine’s decentralized power grid and centralized heating systems against systematic aerial bombardment.
Expanding air defense and joint production: Accelerating the delivery of American Patriot interceptor missiles, which the EU approved for direct procurement for the first time last week, while aggressively curbing single-source supply dependencies. To this end, Brussels and Kyiv are collaborating on Project Freyja to engineer an affordable, modular missile-defense platform pairing Ukrainian combat experience with European industrial manufacturing, funded in part by remaining balances from the SAFE fund.
Aggressive sanctions enforcement: Prioritizing strict compliance and closing loopholes that enable Moscow to circumvent existing trade penalties. "It is not necessarily new sanctions that are needed, but first and foremost the enforcement of existing ones," von der Leyen stated.
Winter Vulnerabilities and Preparedness
In remarks to the BBC, United Nations Development Programme Administrator Alexander De Croo warned that Ukraine faces its most dangerous winter since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, cautioning that renewed barrages on generation and distribution hubs could provoke an acute humanitarian crisis.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi noted at the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv that the nation’s energy sector enters the season significantly better prepared than last year, though he cautioned that completely safeguarding every electrical substation and production node from saturation strikes remains impossible.