We gave Ukraine $350 billion," said president Donald Trump in February this year. The American leader likes to operate on large amounts, and this includes not only examples of American generosity. In a akin way, he speaks of U.S. trade relations. The problem is that the fact is frequently missed, depending on the request to overstate or underestimate the profits and costs incurred by his country. In the case of Ukraine, he drastically extorted them, which exposes the late published study of the Institute of planet Economy (IfW) from Kiel.
IfW has been implementing a task called "Ukraine Support Tracker" (UST) for over 3 years. As part of it, data are collected on global assistance for Kiev, launched after February 24, 2022. The information is obtained from 41 countries, in peculiar EU associate States and G7 and includes assistance declared by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank. The UST does not take into account private donations and support of global organisations specified as the global Monetary Fund. Nor are the costs associated with the reception and presence of Ukrainian refugees included in the aid pool.
Weapons from old commitments
The latest UST study was released on April 15. What does it say? For example, the fact that since the Trump administration began its office, U.S. aid to Ukraine has been stuck. The Kilon institute did not evidence any further tranche of support after 20 January 2025 – and this applies to both military aid and financial or humanitarian aid. The last American package was announced for Joe Biden's presidency, on January 9, that year. It had a value of EUR 480 million ($500 million) and contained primarily anti-aircraft defence equipment and equipment for F-16 fighters.
American weapons proceed to enter the East, but only on the basis of old commitments. fresh ones are gone, and late Trump refused to sale the Patriot systems to Ukraine. Kiev declared that he would be willing to acquisition 10 Patriot batteries in the US for money from another global partners. The American leader laughed at this idea, although it was actually for media (including social media). We don't know the White House's authoritative position on this.
Small and melting advantage
"The fresh break in US aid increases force on European governments to do more, both in terms of financial and military assistance," comments Taro Nishikawa, a associate of the "Ukraine Support Tracker" team. These words describe the challenge facing Europe, but besides reflect the current state of affairs. In January and February, the United Kingdom granted EUR 360 million to support Ukraine, and Germany provided EUR 450 million, Norway EUR 610 million, Denmark – EUR 690 million, and Sweden's most generous in this period as much as EUR 1.1 billion. In addition, the European Commission paid out a debt of EUR 3 billion to Ukraine.
Consequently, the full amount of European aid amounted to EUR 138 billion, counting from the start of the full-scale war. Most importantly, this sum is EUR 23 billion higher than the United States' current spending. 115 billion euro is almost 131 billion dollars. The amount was small, but besides much lower than the 350 billion that Trump seemingly took from the ceiling.
To be honest, however, it is crucial to mention that the U.S. military support is inactive leading, although it is simply a tiny and melting advantage. Since February 2022, the United States has allocated any EUR 65 billion to military aid to Ukraine, about EUR 1 billion more than Europe.
The large function of the large Five
Disparity in military spending between Europe and America is likely to be addressed soon. But there are more challenges to our continent. According to the authors of the report, smaller countries make disproportionate contributions to the size of their economies. "Many Western European countries only supply limited aid, at least compared to the Nordic and Baltic countries," we read. Next, "Estonia and Denmark have allocated more than 2% of their pre-war GDP to Ukraine, compared with 0.4–0.5% for Germany and the UK, and only 0.1–0.2% for France, Italy or Spain".
Data on Poland are not specified in the UST report. For the sake of order, note – based information of the Chancellery of the president of Poland from February this year – that Poland has allocated the equivalent of 4.91% of GDP to Ukraine's assistance, of which 0.71% of GDP is spent on military support for Ukraine (eligible in the reports of the Polish institute) and 4.2% of GDP is the cost of aid to Ukrainian refugees. In real figures, military support has so far cost Poland PLN 15 billion (about EUR 3.5 billion).
IfW authors call for large European economies to “play a more crucial role” in supporting Kiev. This applies primarily to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. “If the “great five” of European countries had done as much as the Nordic and Baltic countries did, Europe could mostly compensate for any US deficit, especially in terms of financial assistance,” says Christoph Trebesch, head of the “Ukraine Support Tracker” project. It's hard to disagree with that conclusion...
