How Much Money Did The US Give To Ukraine?

TRILLIONS?????

Jan 07, 2024

This is a topic that comes up often, I’ve talked about it lightly in the past but today we’ll go at it a little differently. I’ll post what I have with sources on how much and what the US gave to Ukraine in aid from Feb 2022 to the end of 2023. Yes, this war has been going on for almost two years now.

DVIDS - Images - U.S. Marine Corps M777 howitzers shipped to support Ukraine [Image 27 of 37]

There’s been a lot of controversy in US politics regarding US aid to Ukraine, but I’m not interested in any of that. I’m only interested in what can be brought to court, not what one guy said on a podcast.

Funny Words

Even apart from US partisan politics, Aid to Ukraine is sort of a loaded term. There are many categories of what is considered aid. The “aid” that’s been going to Ukraine from the US Gov has been largely financial, training/advisory and weapons/equipment. The US can only provide huge amounts of military and financial “aid” through an act from Congress. For Ukraine it was the Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Acts and variants. Supplemented by a new Lend Lease Act just for Ukraine that started in 2022 and ended in 2023 (FY).

Government Day to Day & Humanitarian

Financial aid is being sent to Ukraine to basically keep their government running. As you probably already know, Ukraine before the war had dam near the GDP of a third world country. Now if you introduce a war that’s impeding business, that figure would be even lower. So, the calculation for the US here is Ukraine can’t fight a war without a functional governments. Total Fiscal aid to Ukraine thus far if you round up is around $27 Billion. Most of this money is sent to Ukraine as a grant from USAID through the World Bank. This is Cash (Loans, grants etc.) to the Ukrainian Government.

For Humanitarian aid, the US sent around $3.9 Billion worth out of a $16.64 Billion commitment. (not sure how recent the 3.9 number is)

Training/Advising

This part is pretty self explanatory. The costs for the US personnel training and advising the Ukraine military, that’s around $18.3 Billion.

Equipment & Weapons

The US has sent $44.5 Billion worth of *equipment* and weapons to Ukraine. This get’s a lot of confusion, this is not cash going to Ukraine. The money amount refers to what the equipment is valued at. So for example if I send you a Glock worth $500, the DoD would say I sent you $500 in security assistance. The DoD and the US Gov as a whole is not doing themselves any favors PR wise by presenting their weapon shipments this way.

Another way weapon movements to Ukraine can be deceiving to the untrained eye is by thinking all of this equipment is recently being produced and sent, or taken from active duty use. Most of the equipment going to Ukraine is from storage and a lot of them are not the latest models. For example, the US sent Ukraine an older Abrams tank, they got the M1A1 version and not the newer variants of the M1A2. That being said, some of their weapons systems are currently in use by the US military like the HIMARS.

Total

So far, the US committed a total of around $113 Billion to Ukraine. Only around $27Billion of that is in direct cash to keep the Ukrainian government afloat. Also, some of it does not go to towards Ukraine per say, it’s for things like helping refugees etc..

If you want to go more in depth in this I suggest reading the research paper below.