Europe has “clearly overtaken” the U.S. in providing aid to Ukraine although total aid budgets for the country remain low, according to new research. The Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker (UST) also found that military aid for Ukraine is increasingly being sourced from industry as opposed to it coming from existing arsenals and surplus military stock. The figures from the UST come as the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, and controversy over just who has provided the most continues. Donald Trump, the U.S. president, has irked European governments by making repeated claims that the American total for aid spending surpasses that of Europe. Addressing the press at the White House on February 18, for example, the president said: “I think Europe has given $100 billion and we've given let's say $300 plus.” European critics of Trump argue that his claim the U.S. outspends Europe—which they regard as questionable—emboldens him to interact with Russia in a peace process alone while sidelining, without justification, European leaders. Figures for 2022-2024 from the UST published this month appear to support this criticism although the U.S. remains the biggest single donor country to Ukraine in purely financial terms. “Europe as a whole has clearly overtaken the US in terms of Ukraine aid,” it wrote in its report. “In total, Europe has allocated €70 billion in financial and humanitarian aid as well as €62 billion in military aid. This compares to €64 billion in military aid from the U.S. as well as €50 billion in financial and humanitarian allocations.” It added that the drop in U.S. funding for Ukraine began in mid-2023, and with Trump now encamped in the Oval Office military aid “is expected to stall again”. Despite the billions of euros flowing to Ukraine the UST stresses that the amounts are just a tiny fraction of donor countries GDP. “When looking at the government budgets in most European donor countries, Ukraine aid over the last three years looks more like a minor political ‘pet project’ rather than a major fiscal effort,” Christoph Trebesch, head of the UST, said in the report. Germany, the UK, and the US, the report added mobilized less than 0.2 percent of their GDP per year to support Ukraine. The UST also wrote that one of the “most notable developments in military aid over the past three years is a gradual shift from relying on donors’ stockpiles to procuring newly produced weapons and equipment.” Two-thirds of military aid is now sourced direct from industry as European countries improve weapons manufacturing and procurement procedures, and work on enhancing international cooperation. “Russia's war against Ukraine has become a war of procurement and weapons production,” said Trebesch. “It is thus crucial to build up industrial capacity for defense production—especially in Europe. The best way to do so is by pan-European cooperation.”
Increasing amounts of military aid for Ukraine is now soured direct from industry. Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
