Even as the Trump-backed Ukraine peace plan is said to be advancing as negotiations intensify ahead of a Washington-imposed deadline of Thursday, the European Union continues its efforts to ramp up support to Ukraine's defense sector.

On Tuesday European Parliament voted to approve a 1.5 billion euros ($1.7bn) program which seeks to deepen integration between Ukraine and Europe on military-industrial relations.

"We shall be powerful geopolitically if we shall be strong in our defense, and we shall be strong in defense if we shall be strong in our defense industry, and if we shall be strong in our defense industry, we shall be industrially independent, autonomous and much less fragmented," EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said just ahead of the vote.

Anticipating a Trump withdrawal of large-scale arms support to Ukraine's military, the Zelensky government has been striving to augment support from Europe in order to establish domestic military production and capabilities.

But one of Moscow's key rationales for the 'special military operation' in the first place has been the expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Ukraine. 

Russia views such EU projects as to sponsor Ukraine's defense industrial base as yet a continuation of this same problem. 

If Ukraine keeps getting armed to the teeth, whether from outside or its own European-assisted defense production base, this could just perpetuation a major issue which keeps Russia and Ukraine fighting. This sets up for future war to be renewed, even if some kind of ceasefire is reached in the interim. 

Meanwhile, in light of the recent corruption scandal which has resulted in Zelensky coming under rare scrutiny over graft by his top officials...

This is also why Moscow is likely to reject the US proposal to provide Ukraine with Article 5-like security protections. Putin will see in it a recipe for renewal of future conflict.

Russia has repeatedly insisted it doesn't want to see a 'temporary' solution to the war, but wants something final, permanent, and enduring. But again, not helping matters is that Europe is readying to invest in arms for Ukraine over a period of years or even decades.