Europe Begins to Overtake US in Volume of Aid to Ukraine

Europe is providing more aid to Ukraine than the United States under Donald Trump's administration, according to experts from the Kiel Institute for World Economics (IfW Kiel), who have prepared a new analysis of aid to Ukraine (Ukraine Support Tracker).

The Gaze reports on this with reference to Ukrinform.

The European continent has so far allocated 23 billion euros more than the United States, according to the document, which covers aid through February 2025.

US aid stopped after President Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025. No new military, financial, or humanitarian aid has been forthcoming since the United States announced its last package, under the Joe Biden administration, on January 9 - €480 million in military aid, including air defense and air-to-ground missiles, as well as equipment for F-16 fighter jets. The last time U.S. support was suspended for such a long period was in January 2024, during the deadlock in Congress over a new aid package for Ukraine, the authors remind.

“The recent pause in U.S. aid increases pressure on European governments to do more, both in financial and military assistance,” said Taro Nishikawa, Ukraine Support Tracker project manager.

At the same time, Europe continued to announce new aid packages: in January and February, the United Kingdom allocated €360 million, Germany €450 million, Norway €610 million, Denmark €690 million, and Sweden as much as €1.1 billion. In addition, the European Commission has allocated the first loan of €3 billion to Ukraine.

As a result, Europe's total assistance since the beginning of the full-scale war has reached 138 billion euros, 23 billion euros more than the United States (115 billion euros).

However, in the area of military support, the United States is still the leader, albeit by a small margin: since February 2022, Washington has provided Ukraine with about €65 billion in military aid, about €1 billion more than Europe.

The new data emphasizes the great heterogeneity in Europe. Many Western European countries provide only limited assistance, at least compared to the Nordic and Baltic countries. Countries such as Estonia or Denmark allocated more than 2 percent of their GDP to Ukraine (as of 2021), compared to about 0.4-0.5 percent for Germany and the United Kingdom, and only 0.1-0.2 percent for France, Italy, or Spain.

In the previous analysis, the authors emphasized that it is mostly the large European countries - the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain - that need to increase their support to partially or fully replace US aid. Overall, according to the IfW, European governments spend only 0.1 percent of their annual GDP on aid to Ukraine. If there are no further aid packages from the US, but support is maintained at the same level, Europe will have to double its annual support. In absolute terms, this would mean that Europe would have to increase its annual aid from the current 44 billion euros to about 82 billion euros.

The Ukraine Support Tracker systematically and continuously records the value of support that 41 governments have pledged or already provided to Ukraine since February 2022. The calculations are based on open data. The new data includes aid (promised or provided) up to and including February of this year.

Germany and other countries pledged billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine for its defense against Russia at the recent Ramstein meeting. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, in particular, announced the delivery of Iris-T anti-aircraft missile systems in the short term, as well as battle tanks, artillery systems and reconnaissance drones, etc.

As The Gaze reported earlier, on April 9, the 10th meeting of the EU-Ukraine Association Council took place in Brussels, where Ukraine received significant support from European partners.

The EU has transferred €1 billion to Ukraine under the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) initiative. This is the third tranche of the G7 initiative, funded by proceeds from frozen Russian assets. These funds will be allocated to priority state budget expenditures.