During his last visit to Kiev, US President Joe Biden announced a new $500 million arms shipment to Ukraine. It was a promise with particular weight, as February 24 marks exactly one year since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The leading role of the US is underlined by an updated study on the economic value of aid to Ukraine, released by the Institute for the World Economy (IfW) based in Kiel, Germany.

“The Americans are setting the tone for efforts to support Ukraine,” notes Macroeconomics professor and Institute Fellow Christoph Trembes, who is responsible for the Ukraine Support Tracker, a constantly updated bulletin on aid to Kyiv. “Remarkable is the reluctance shown by the Europeans in the first year of the war,” says the German economist, at a time when Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by 40% due to the war.

Germany’s bilateral financial aid is minimal

According to the updated data of the Ukraine Support Tracker, the US has promised new aid of 37 billion euros, surpassing all EU member states. Of course, the promised aid is one thing and the aid already offered is another. If we add these two categories of funds, the USA is again in first place with 73.1 billion euros, compared to 54.9 billion of the EU of “27”. In absolute terms, the USA leads, while Great Britain and Germany follow.

The economists of the IfW Institute make a comparison with the amounts allocated by the 50 countries of the “Contact Group for Ukraine” to combat other crises. “Total aid to Ukraine is only a small fraction of the funds available within each country,” they point out. A typical example is the 250 billion euros that Germany has set aside from January 2022 for state subsidies that will curb inflation, especially in energy prices.

Germany’s bilateral aid to Ukraine does not exceed 6.15 billion euros, when the German government has allocated 5.65 billion to reduce fuel taxes, as well as finance the subsidized monthly “9 euro ticket”. The total for Ukraine does not include the Leopard 2s, whose shipment has been rescheduled for May. It does include, however, $100 million for training Ukrainian pilots in the use of fighter jets, which the US had approved last summer.

Three times the amount for the liberation of Kuwait!

For the first time, IfW researchers compare the cost of aid to Ukraine with similar costs in the past. For example, it is pointed out that in the First Persian Gulf War for the liberation of Kuwait, in 1990/91, Germany had allocated three times the amount. This money was given directly to the US, as Germany did not participate directly in the war operation “Desert Storm”.

As for the USA itself, they had disbursed 1% of the American GDP for the First Persian Gulf War, while correspondingly today – and so far – they have less than 0.4% for Ukraine. But the annual spending of the Americans in Afghanistan in the period 2001-2010 was on average three times that recorded in the first year of the war in Ukraine. Of course, American ground troops were also sent to Afghanistan, unlike what is happening today.

In addition, the researchers of the IfW Institute proved that last summer aid to Ukraine began to decrease – from an amount of more than 20 billion euros in May to about 5 billion in June. An increase is recorded in November and coincides with successful military operations to intercept the Russians in the eastern regions of Ukraine.