When Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that repelling Russia’s January 20, 2026 attack cost Ukraine €80 million, the figure was meant to shock. It should. But it also forces us to revisit an older, far larger number — $12 billion.

In December 2019, Ukraine approved a settlement between Naftogaz of Ukraine and Gazprom, withdrawing legal claims and penalties estimated at around $12 billion. This included a $7.4 billion fine imposed by Ukraine’s antimonopoly regulator and roughly $5 billion in claims at the Stockholm Arbitration.

These were not theoretical sums. Just a year earlier, in 2018, Naftogaz had already won $2.56 billion from Gazprom in arbitration — money that was paid and entered Ukraine’s state budget. Ukraine had proven it could win. And it had proven Russia could be forced to pay.

So why walk away?

The explanation offered at the time was “pragmatic”: gas transit to Europe would continue, generating revenue. The five-year contract was expected to bring Ukraine about $7 billion. Even on paper, the math did not add up. Ukraine gave up nearly twice that amount in enforceable claims.

But the deeper issue was not arithmetic — it was strategy.

In hindsight, the settlement looks less like compromise and more like a critical misjudgment. Funds that remained in Russia’s hands strengthened a state that would later launch a full-scale invasion, wage energy terror, and deliberately target civilian infrastructure. Every intercepted missile today costs millions. Every blackout costs lives, health, and resilience.

This argument does not require accusations of intent. It requires acknowledgment of consequence.

When Ukraine now spends €80 million in a single night to survive, the unanswered question from 2019 becomes unavoidable: why was the enemy allowed to keep $12 billion when Ukraine had both legal leverage and precedent on its side?

History may ultimately record that decision not as diplomacy, but as a strategic error whose cost is still being paid — in euros, in darkness, and in cold apartments across Kyiv.