Explained: Did the US really spend ‘$350bn’ on Ukraine?

medium118664898“The problem is I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy. And I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States … Once we sign that deal, you’re in a much better position. But you’re not acting at all thankful, and that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing.”This is what a displeased Donald Trump told Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky during the now-infamous White House meeting. Trump’s displeasure centred on what he described as Zelensky’s apparent lack of gratitude.In the past, Trump has blamed Zelensky for starting the war and called him a dictator. But he made the sharper back-handed comment earlier, in a campaign speech, when he called the Ukrainian president “the greatest salesman of all time”: “Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion … We’re stuck in that war unless I’m president.”So, it was important for Trump to show his supporters that he would strike a hard bargain, claim the money back and end the war. Now, just before Zelensky arrived in the US for the deal, Trump said the US is “in for, probably, $350 billion and Europe is in for $100 billion. And that’s a big difference … The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we’ve been able to make a deal where we’re going to get our money back and we’re going to get a lot of money in the future.”That number came up again during the White House meeting. “We gave you — through this stupid president (referring to Joe Biden) — $350 billion,” Trump told Zelensky. “You have to be thankful.”But first, what deal?Ukraine’s natural resources could be worth trillions of dollars — of which deposits worth an estimated $350bn are locked in Russia-occupied territories. Besides coal, oil and gas, those resources include critical minerals — a category of minerals used in modern technology — like graphite, titanium, lithium and uranium. Ukraine also says it has reserves of rare earth minerals, the hard-to-mine resources whose production China dominates to an extent that unsettles the US and European nations. So, last year, Zelensky floated the idea of granting the US access to all these natural resources — as joint investments — to secure wartime assistance. Trump won the election soon after and did not mind the idea. But he wanted Ukraine to use revenue from the resources to repay the US $500bn for military aid. Zelensky did not agree. Because the amount was punitive. The larger cause of the dissonance, however, was that Trump saw the deal as “payback” for past American support, while Zelensky saw it as a means of securing future American support. Eventually, they did agree on the terms, with some concessions (the $500-bn figure was dropped). That deal was the reason Zelensky was in the White House. But after the showdown, it was not signed.medium118671750How much did helping Ukraine actually cost the US?Zelensky has said that the entire wartime military cost so far has been around $320bn, of which $200bn came from the US and the EU combined.So, where did Trump’s $350-billion figure come from? It’s hard to put together. Data from the official US oversight agency which has been keeping track of American spending on Ukraine shows that since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the US Congress has approved $183bn, a little over half the amount that Trump has cited. And another dataset, by the Kiel Institute, a German think-tank, shows that the US has committed $128bn since the end of diplomatic relations between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. Differences in methodology sometimes explain why estimates don’t concur — one may count aid only when the fund transfers go through, another may consider all commitments as aid. But both these numbers refer to aid approvals and commitments — not actual fund transfers — and, so, are higher estimates. And neither comes close to the $350-bn figure. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r Did others help Ukraine less?One of Trump’s recurring complaints has also been that Europe is not picking up the slack when it comes to helping Ukraine. For this, we go back to the Kiel Institute database which has comparable figures. In terms of aid commitments, there is a gap between the US and EU institutions. But EU institutions only refer to bodies like the European Commission and the European Council. If individual European nations were to be counted as well, their commitments surpass those of the US by more than $130bn.The actual difference right now is in how much money is spent after the commitments. And the US does exceed the EU’s spending in allocations — commitments that have materialised as transfers or are designated to a specific purpose for delivery. As a single nation, the US is definitely the largest donor for Ukraine. In a projected no-US scenario drawn up by the Kiel Institute, if the US stopped all aid beginning in March, military and financial aid to Ukraine could drop by 27% by the end of the year. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r What type of help does Ukraine get? And what does it need?Almost 90% of aid to Ukraine is short-term, which reflects the immediate reality — it is a war zone, after all. And since it’s wartime aid, it is natural for most of it to be military assistance — either as weapons or financing. Military assistance accounts for more than 40% of the aid Ukraine has received so far. But in 2024, the military aid allocation was actually lower than the allocation in 2023. At the same time, financial assistance — loans, grants, currency swap lines for financial stability — went up in 2024 and was higher than military aid.Why? Because that’s what long drawn out wars do. Resources to fight the war gradually make way for resources to keep the economy going. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r An update on a World Bank assessment of the damage caused by the war, which came out last week, already shows what the scale of recovery would have to be — whenever it begins. Ukraine’s buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed to an extent that the reconstruction cost is now estimated to be more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade. Up from $350bn in mid-2022 and more than $400bn in 2023. It’s nearly thrice the nominal GDP of Ukraine in 2024.That sort of recovery is what Zelensky has been trying to initiate. Ukraine’s need for assistance is not limited to 900 tanks or 700 long-range artillery guns, but a sustainable way to revive the Ukrainian economy. The mineral resources deal would have been a way to do that. Now that the deal has been — to be optimistic — put on hold, the UK and France have started working on a ceasefire deal for Trump’s approval. (All of this, while Russia’s economy shows a stubborn resilience to the war and sanctions — because China and India emerged as its largest markets, and because the EU is still spending more money on Russian oil and gas than on financial aid to Ukraine.)Zelensky, meanwhile, has said that things will be “difficult without the US support”. And, lest he should be interpreted as ungrateful again, he posted a ‘thank you’ to every political leader who tweeted in support of Ukraine after the White House meeting — 39 times.