Some of Ukraine’s backers have spent more than 2% of their GDP in aid, German research has shown
Ukraine received more than $170 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian assistance between January 2022 and February 2023, according to a fresh study published this month by a German economic research center.
The data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) covers aid provided by Ukraine’s 41 largest donors, which mostly consist of the US and its Western allies.
Washington unsurprisingly emerged as Kiev’s largest single donor, with its total aid accounting for more than 45% of all assistance provided to Ukraine over that period. Roughly 60% of that money was spent on weapons, the data shows.
The UK’s military assistance to Kiev accounted for 67% of London’s total aid to Ukraine over that period. Most money Warsaw and Amsterdam allocated for Ukraine was also spent on arms, the research indicated.
The EU’s support, including both the aid provided by Brussels and bilateral assistance provided by the bloc’s members, amounted to almost 40% of the total aid for Ukraine over the same period.
The US was also the biggest military aid provider for Ukraine, spending a total of $47.16 billion on arms for Kiev’s troops, leaving all other nations far behind. The UK became the second largest contributor by spending $7.1 billion on weapons for the Ukrainian forces.
According to the IfW, both the US and the UK were not the most transparent assistance providers, when it comes to aiding Kiev. London and Washington took the 17th and 18th places out of 41 respectively in the list of most transparent donors compiled by the German research center. The first two places on this list were occupied by Switzerland and Germany respectively.
Some of Kiev’s Western backers shouldered additional costs due to the need to accommodate refugees coming from Ukraine, the IfW study showed. Poland, which spent 0.6% of its GDP on bilateral aid to Ukraine, had to spend another 2.2% on Ukrainian refugees, according to the data.
The accumulated costs of helping Ukraine exceeded 2% of GDP in the case of Latvia and Estonia as well.
This week, the Pentagon announced a new package of weapons for Ukraine, including 30 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. More than a dozen of the armored vehicles have reportedly been damaged or destroyed since Kiev launched its counteroffensive against Russian forces earlier this month.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Washington is also mulling sending long-range missiles to bolster Ukrainian capabilities in its ongoing campaign, which has largely stalled so far.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh recently criticized US military aid to Kiev by calling it a “very bad investment.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also said this week that Ukraine could not defeat Moscow on the battlefield and called for a negotiated solution to the conflict instead.
