Denmark plans to scale back its military assistance to Ukraine next year, and the amount cut is being widely reported as a huge amount - up to almost half of what's it's been since 2022.

According to Danish Broadcasting Corporation, the tiny northern European country has long stood out for its exceptionally high contributions that it made earlier in the conflict, but now the Danish government wants other countries should shoulder more of the burden.

The country's Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen has informed parliament that the government intends to allocate 9.4 billion kroner (around $1.5 billion) in aid to Ukraine in 2026.

This marks a decrease from the 16.5 billion kroner (about $2.6 billion) provided this year and the nearly 19 billion kroner (roughly $3 billion) distributed the prior year.

Danish media has described that this is partly the result dwindling resources in the Ukraine Fund, which is a dedicated pool established in 2023 with broad political support among European allies.

In total, since the start of the war in early 2022 Denmark has provided a whopping nearly $11 billion in military aid to Kiev. It has also provided F-16 jets and hosted fighter pilot training programs for Ukrainians.

Simon Kollerup, a member of the Denmark's Defense Committee, has stated that "it is natural that we are seeing a stabilization of the level of support being provided".

"We decided to be one of the countries that took the lead at the beginning of the war by providing large-scale support. I also think it is fair to say that this support somewhat exceeds what is actually dictated by the size of our country. Therefore, I find it quite natural that the support is decreasing," Kollerup added.

This comes at a time that Washington is also withdrawing much of its outsized support to Ukraine, with Trump's preferred scheme being to sell weapons to Europe, which will in turn sell or transfer them to Kiev.

The timing of Denmark's announced major reduction in aid also comes as the Zelensky government is mired in a corruption scandal which goes straight to the presidential office itself (with top aides having been dismissed and investigated), so perhaps some EU countries are finally wising up, and no longer wish to act in a blank check manner.

Even the NY Times has just acknowledged in a report that "President Volodymyr Zelensky's administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kiev even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around."