Yves here. The authors assembled a large team of researchers to perform a granular analysis of the value of the weapons and direct aid the US supplied to Ukraine since the start of the Special Military Operation. They find it is only somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 the appropraited amount. The implication is that the US has a lot of additional approved funding that it could use to keep propping up Ukraine (ignoring the elephant in the room, that the US and its allies have stripped their weapons caches bare, and mere money can’t magic arms out of thin air).
Now of course, one can take issue with their haircutting the values on what one might call a mark to market basis, when the Pentagon’s apparent practice is to value munitions in storage at their initial cost, no matter how decrepit they are (recall as one of many examples that Ukraine complained that many of the Javelins we sent would not fire). However, the Biden Administration appears to have engaged in a weak form version of this exercise. Recall that there were at least two times when the Pentagon appeared to have come up against the limits of weapons authorizations. Then voila! Suddenly the Administration said it had “found” a few billion more in permitted supplies. The most likely way they “found” more additional approved capacity was by marking down the value of earlier deliveries.
Also note the authors are refreshingly up front about their pro-Ukraine stance. That does not make their analysis incorrect; one would need to challenge their methodology or present an alternative tally that was as detailed as theirs.
By Anastassia Fedyk, Assistant Professor of Finance, Haas School of Business University of California, Berkeley and James Hodson, Chief Executive Officer. Originally published at VoxEU
The US has been the largest country-to-country contributor of aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. However, the exact amount of aid provided has become the subject of debate, as generally available data tend to bundle together grants, loans, equipment, investments, and other forms of assistance as if it were all on-budget cash funding. This column tracks each weapon system provided to Ukraine, its vintage, and depreciation to come up with the first quantitative economic estimate of the value of US non-debt direct support to Ukraine.
Since Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea and undeclared war in Ukraine’s east in 2014, the US has been instrumental in providing Ukraine with training, equipment, and the institutional support needed to survive and develop as a democratic European nation. Since 2022, due to Russia’s brutal and internationally condemned full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US stepped up its support, which has been critical to the functioning of government, the survival of civil society, and the ability of Ukraine’s military to hold back a much larger enemy. However, the amount of aid provided in value terms is significantly lower than the numbers generally reported (Masters and Merrow 2024, Trebesch et al. 2025).
In a new paper (Fedyk et al. 2025), my co-authors and I assess the economic value of the military aid provided by the US to Ukraine. Instead of more than $60 billion in military assistance (US State Department 2025), the real value amounts to about $18.3 billion. This discrepancy stems from inflated valuations of older weapons stockpiles and other contributing factors.
Our group of 19 research assistants reviewed thousands of procurement contracts to track each weapon system provided by the US to Ukraine, consider the vintage of these weapons, assess their depreciation and failure rates, and assign a depreciated value to the old stock actually provided to Ukraine, rather than the replacement value in new weapons obtained by the US. We also examined the terms of the aid provided, including loans versus grants and support for other countries (e.g. Poland) under the ‘Ukraine aid’ umbrella, to identify specifically grants made by the US to Ukraine.
We also examine direct budget support (non-military aid) from the US to Ukraine, stripping out repayable loans, including specifically grants made by the US to Ukraine, and accounting for US funds that were used to collateralise loans. We also note the extensive terms and conditionality of this aid, which meant that the aid was among the most transparent and audited expenditures, and the Government of Ukraine was never in a position to misappropriate any of the funds.
Our analysis concludes that in three years of full-scale war, the total monetary value of US aid delivered to Ukraine’s government amounts to $50.9 billion, of which $18.3 billion comprises military aid, with the remaining $32.6 billion direct budget support in the form of expense reimbursement through the World Bank and collateral for loans. These figures differ from the appropriation amounts by a factor of two to three (see Figure 1)
Figure 1 Breakdown of different categories of US aid provided to Ukraine into military (in blue) and direct budget support (in green), with verified values shaded in dark colouring and excess reported amounts in light colouring
We break down US support into eight categories: (1) direct funding via international institutional accounts (e.g. World Bank); (2) loans; (3) collateral for the issuance of loans to the Government of Ukraine; (4) Treasury Account Grants for US defence procurement; (5) direct equipment transfer under Presidential Drawdown Authority; (6) indirect equipment transfer by purchasing replacement equipment for an ally; (7) so-called ‘lend-lease’ agreements (enacted but never used); and (8) Foreign Military Financing (FMF) accounts, which allowed strategic loans to Ukraine to purchase US defence supplies.
Direct funding (1) consists of the $31 billion that the US provided through World Bank accounts managed by USAID contractors Deloitte and KPMG. A portion of those funds paid for the administration of funds and program audits, as well as overheads of the World Bank. These accounts work as a reimbursement for verified expenses including pensions and teachers’ and healthcare workers’ salaries. Since Ukraine’s eGovernment system (Diia) is considered among the most advanced in the world (Motkin 2023), the Ukrainian government has effective documentation down to every individual disbursement into people’s bank accounts.
Loans (2) are repayable instruments that should not be counted towards non-recouped ‘aid’. For example, the Export Import Bank of the United States made a loan to Ukraine worth $156 million for the purchase of 40 diesel Wabtec locomotives, which supported 800 new jobs in Western Pennsylvania. This loan is repayable in full.
Collateral (3) for loans should be valued as the value of the collateral that is at risk, rather than the loan amount. The US used $1.6 billion and frozen Russian assets to collateralise approximately $25 billion in loans for the recovery of Ukraine and Moldova. The loans were organised primarily through the World Bank in coordination with other stakeholders and are standard repayable debt instruments.
Treasury Accounts Grants (4) capture $12.1 billion in procurement budget for US weapons systems, munitions, maintenance, and services needed by the Ukrainian military. Not all of the items procured have been delivered to Ukraine yet, and it is unclear how much of the $12.1 billion has been utilised. This spending is a subsidy payment to the US defence industry, from which Ukraine derives a benefit in new equipment and services. Ukraine pays a market price for these weapons despite numerous restrictions. Due to these restrictions, delivery schedules, and the limited selection of items that Ukraine is allowed to procure, the researchers estimate the actual value of (4) as closer to $5.5 billion.
Direct equipment transfers (5) were provided under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which has been used 55 times in the last three years to send a total of approximately $31 billion of equipment and munitions drawn from existing US stockpiles. However, the $31 billion figure is based on Department of Defense accounting and replacement values, rather than the actual value of the weapons being sent. In Fedyk et al. (2025), we conduct a deep analysis of every weapons system sent to Ukraine, its age, the US stockpile status, and imputed battlefield failure rates, which gives a different picture of the upper limit on the value of these systems to Ukraine: $12.5 billion. For example, Figure 2 illustrates the calculation for Stryker armoured personnel carriers – the depreciated value for carriers produced in 2011 or 2012 is much lower than that of the carriers produced in 2023.
Figure 2 Stryker armoured personnel carriers delivered by the US to Ukraine by production year
Note: Carriers that were produced more than a decade ago are less valuable than those produced in the last few years.
It should also be noted that the vast majority of the equipment provided to Ukraine is no longer used by the US military and therefore had an effective value of zero to the US, other than as potential military support to allies or as a liability due to stringent requirements for recycling of weapons systems and munitions. The estimate of $12.5 billion is a conservative upper bound, without fully writing off such systems.
Indirect equipment transfers (6) consist of approximately $20 billion of strategic investment into Poland’s defence industry, but only $340 million of that specifically accounts for capabilities that Poland gave to Ukraine. Poland is a NATO member, so investment in its defence sector is not aid for Ukraine.
The lend-lease (7) programme expired unused.
Foreign military assistance loans (8) comprise approximately $9.2 billion in loans allocated by the US for Ukraine and 17 other countries affected by the Russian war to procure American-made military supplies, services, and equipment.
Summing these together, we estimate that the true value of military aid provided by the US to Ukraine totals $18.3 billion, and the direct budgetary support totals $32.6 billion (in the form of reimbursement of expenses or collateral for loans), although this portion also includes overheads by intermediaries, and the true value is likely lower.
The total comes out to $50.9 billion, or less than $17 billion per year. This is a negligible part of the US budget (0.25% of the federal budget; see Congressional Budget Office 2024). For comparison, it is roughly the cost of maintenance and energy for federal buildings.
In addition, we note that Ukraine has been subject to extensive audits as an aid recipient (US Congress 2023), and there has been no evidence of issues or anomalies unearthed through those mechanisms. Furthermore, budgetary support from the US to Ukraine has often come with conditionality such as Ukraine implementing specific reforms (Yellen 2024).
Overall, despite the US being the largest country-to-country provider of aid to Ukraine, the value provided is significantly smaller than frequently cited numbers, and small in relative terms compared to the US economy. The US has provided less aid overall than Europe (EU numbers based on Administration Team of the EU Delegation to the United States 2025, plus UK numbers based on UK Government 2025), and a comparable amount of military aid. Since the economies of Europe and the United States are comparable in size, the allies across the Atlantic have shown similar levels of engagement and support.
See original post for references
“We also examine direct budget support (non-military aid) from the US to Ukraine, stripping out repayable loans, including specifically grants made by the US to Ukraine, and accounting for US funds that were used to collateralise loans.”
How highly convenient to strip out the above. Except all these loans are highly likely to be unrepayable by the rump country that will be left of the original Ukraine when hostilities finally end. Much of the former assets will be under Russian control and as I understand it, Blackrock and other US companies have already got their mitts on many assets in the rump area.
You appear to be way behind the curve on the debate over this issue.
First, Trump has repeatedly maintained, including in front of Macron in a presser, who tried to correct Trump, that the US “gave” $350 billion to Ukraine, none of it as loans. He gave a tidy statement of his position again:
So Trump is fabricating at to the total amount of support provided and its form. Macron pointed out the EU and EU states made grands and gave direct aid as well as making loans.
Second, you are also incorrect about BlackRock. The loans are secured by the government, not private parties. So the assets owned by private investors were NEVER backing these loans.
And the BlackRock role in Ukraine has been wildly exaggerated.
BlackRock has been in the headlines for being an advisor to (NOT INVESTOR IN) a big vaporware fund to rebuild Ukraine. That effort has gotten pretty much nowhere. It’s a hollow mandate.
BlackRock, with other US players like Cargill, has been an investor in Ukraine farmland. However, <30% of that land is corporate owned, and Ukraine oligarchs are the biggest group (the furrniers are often in JVs with them). European investors, from what I can tell, are at least as significant as Americans.
I bow to your updated knowledge. There is so much smoke and mirrors going on around Ukraine and I certainly do not have a clear picture. What struck me was that like annual accounts, they can be reported to suit the company publishing them, hence the let’s strip out items that do not support our argument.
The below was from last November.
https://tlio.org.uk/war-and-theft-the-hostile-takeover-of-ukraines-agricultural-land-private-equitys-21st-century-war-for-global-enclosure-and-slavery/
The U.S. government is accountable to the American people, not the Ukrainian people. Even if the $200,000 Javelin missiles sent to Ukraine did not work, as long as they were purchased with $200,000 of American taxpayer money, Washington can be said to have provided $200,000 worth of aid.
I very much disagree. The US did NOT spend new money except in very rare cases to buy/produce weapons for Ukraine.
Weapons that do not work are garbage and should have been written off long ago and the warehouse space should also have been freed up.
Private businesses similarly depreciate assets. The failure to do so is proof of questionable accounting methods.
The fact that the Pentagon did not do so is a fraud upon taxpayers that sending them to Ukraine hides. Did you miss that the Pentagon has been unable to balance its books for decades? Chicanery like this is one small piece of this picture.
Biden had incentives to support this bad practice to make the total being sent to Ukraine look bigger than it was.
Nope. If a Javelin does not work, Washington can be said to have provided $0 worth of aid for the price of $200,000. Now that I think of it, if Javelin failure get operators killed (by a tank presumably), then its worth could go way bellow $0 (depending on how much one value lives lost).
Yeah, if the US had sent $200,000 in US dollars in a suitcase to Ukraine and said “here you are, go nuts, here’s our price list, we highly recommend the Javelins” then we could truly say that the US provided $200,000 worth of aid. The US did not do that. It sent a bunch of materiel, assessed a value for it, and then declared a debt from Ukraine in that amount. Lots of opportunity for dodgy accounting practices there, particularly since it’s a highly unequal power relationship and Ukraine has limited or no recourse.
It’s like the company store, but worse.
I owe my soul to the company store …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1980WfKC0o
P.S. Song about miners also seems appropriate because the Donbass miners took arms in 2014 knowing what US-Banderite takover got in store.
P.S.2. Javelin used to be $80,000 not so long ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/4ovu1i/each_javelin_round_costs_80000_and_the_idea_that/?rdt=51209
“Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it’s fired by a guy who doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”
Actual cost vs market cost precisely. “Oh sure, we bought X for 1000, but depreciation and a factor of lack of function makes it really worth only 450”.
It’s not a tax liability or business assets accounting, it’s the actual cost accounting that matters.
I do not question the different ways of valuating arms. I wonder if this is some sort of beginning of a new propaganda drive to stave of the wrath of the Europeans and Americans as the social benefits are drawn down due to money being sent to the Ukronazis and sanctions and all the EU-stupidity.
The argument from the politicians would be “We didn’t give that much to Ukraine so don’t whine about that. We just need to take away everything from you people to build arms to pacify the big bad Roooskie.”
It could of course be used to send more money for Ukraine as Yves pointed out above.
Interesting!
I never heard the word “depreciated” used in my long time in DoD.
Presidential authority was/is to withdraw from stocks of US war reserves, none of the assets were “used”.
A point on Javelin reliability. Javelin like Patriot missiles are delivered boxed for storage and shipment. They are routine “tested” through the box to assure storage reliability. If there were common “dead rounds” it is likely defect in the testing as well as the stored missile.
Supply always uses “”most recent buy in valuing stock/requisitions.
Agree. Have never seen “depreciation” as a consideration. Always the requirement is for X number of serviceable items. There could be consumables associated with a system, such as batteries.
Just wait ’til these experts start applying their expertise in hedonics–by the time they’re done, it’ll turn out that the USA didn’t send any military aid at all to Ukraine!
Since the Pentagon has never managed to pass an audit, why should anyone believe any numbers coming from them?
I am quite confused. Going with their numbers are 100% correct, where exactly is the difference in the $50 billion spent vs some 175 billion dollars that Congress passed or about $120 billion dollars?
That’s quite a slush fund someone put together.
Press has not reported all the categories of funding in the top line passed by congress.
In particular, last summers’ long debated $60 billion included $20B for US European Command operations in support of the fighting.
It costs money to fly AWACS, P-8’s and RC 135 to give data that Kiev uses to kill Russians. It also pays for delivery charges when USAF cargo aircraft are used to deliver items. EUCOM is probably sending low unit cost expendable supplies. Fuel for tanks etc. Satellite support from USSPACEFOR is also costly.
Lot of overhead and low priced stuff goes into proxy war.
Unlike Vietnam this one is not coming of of the pentagon’s hide.
A lot of the money was to replace the weapons, including the ones that were no good, provided from US stocks. So some of this is future money, as in to be paid as per contract terms.
I wonder if there is double counting since there is no assurance that the contracting for replacements (with deliveries regularly many years out) will go to Ukraine, or more pointedly, whether there will be a Ukraine for them to go to.
It sounds to me like we paid twice for the same weapons. We paid to have them built, then we gave money to Ukraine to buy those same weapons?
And now that they are gone we have to replace them with a probably higher priced variant. Which is the future money you’re taking about.
In the first place, there is always a delta between budget authority (money in your bank account) and outlays (checks cleared). How much budget authority did DoD actually receive?
The authors completely ignore the values of goods supplied on the open market. When the Europeans went to buy a million 155 mm shells at about 4,000 USD each the price rose to about 8,000 USD each as this was a sellers market. (Figures quoted from memory of Duran podcast by Alexander Mercouris). I believe only 300,000 were eventually supplied and the stocks were old and there were a lot of duds. So based on this actual real-world example you could make a case that the supplies from the USA were undervalued at $60 Bn.
So how do you calculate the value? Total replacement cost obviously favours the seller but at least is simple and easy to apply. The authors’ depreciation methodology is not clearly explained but the only relevant factor quoted in their examination of Stryker value is imputed battlefield failure (the US stockpile status being of little interest in Ukraine – spares supply, however, would be relevant to value). Figure 2 seems to suggest that Strykers built in 2012 were heaps of junk – or possibly just over-depreciated.
However, it doesn’t really matter that much since the actual figures have been carefully recorded and meticulously audited such that the Government in Ukraine was never in a position to misappropriate funds and there is no evidence (etc etc – I, too, nearly split a gusset laughing at that one). If those audited figures show Ukraine is on the hook for 60 billion USD then I very much doubt Ukraine will be able to reduce it by creative accounting rather than a quid pro quo minerals deal.
My question with all of these various opinions: Here, John Helmer’s vehement speaches on Dima’s channel, etc. is that we’re counting “allocated” public monies. There is no attempt to account for the money out of the Black Budget from which CIA/NSA and other such Agencies take “spending money”. There was no Congressional allocation for the money “invested” in the Ukrainian Maidan (overthrow of the democratically elected President of Ukraine). How much of that and money laundered through US A.I.D. was spent? Or money equivalents for manpower committed from fully funded Department and Agency to direct assistance?
” For comparison, it is roughly the cost of maintenance and energy for federal buildings.”
Seems like this reference is crossing over from Team Repub closing of facilities because they are outdated. Let me go out on a branch here (apologies in advance)
So, like the Dem and Repub requiring the prefunding of USPS retirements and health (the old starve and point to the bad shape of things that only private business can correct cause Gov can’t do anything right) The pre-funding mandate forced the Postal Service to exhaust its $15 billion borrowing limit with the U.S. Treasury – I remember (could be wrong) that this led to some fire sales for USPS property into private hands and then those OCR sorter machines that the USPS helped bring into existence (early adopters) being tossed amid mail in votes and other things bad that the Dem and Repubs did – to force USPS into private hands (financial geniouses) — it is repealed now but, not without a bunch of trough pigs getting thier gruell out of it. Anyway
Seams like the same ‘Financial engineering and resultant engineered Public facing reporting’ is going on to show how smart this investement will be when the ROI will be shown so high. Thank you Ukraine for the hard work and productivity of your fighters killed to achieve these sterling results.
So it seems to me that all hands are on deck to get everything privatized and into the hands of people who know how to turn a buck. Interested in finding out the ROI on supporting genocide, massive human rights violations, torture and coups – Oh yea, I forgot about ROI in areas on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea that are awaiting developement into new rivieras.
I am going to be contrary for a different reason. If America has to restock the weaponry sent to the Ukraine, and I am assuming here that the MIC and its pets in Congress will at some point consider that restock a necessity, the cost is what we will pay to restock.
Yes, not depreciating the aging weaponry could be considered a fraud and listing the original cost for “aid” to Ukraine is only one aspect of it. But it is also just one of many. The graft, fraud and chicanery within the DOD, MIC, and spookville is overwhelming. But let’s not pretend that the American people were not being taken for a ride and vital services being starved for it, whether it was supposedly sent to Ukraine or used for Space X or pretend building Star Wars missile defense….
The accounting by neo-economists seem to have an agenda to direct blame cannons at the US and Trump for the eventual collapse of project Ukraine. Can these people objective or trusted in any sense of the words? For instance:
I commented on Sunday’s post “Trump-Zelensky-Vance Blowup: Does Zelensky Regime End with a Bang, Not a Whimper?” about the contention that the Europeans have do sooo… much and the US soooo… little to support project Ukraine. The neo-economists simply want more war and cook the numbers to help make it happen.
Statista states prior to 2022: The number of United States military personnel in Europe was 63,853 in 2021.
Then going to CFR, it states, “following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some twenty thousand additional U.S. soldiers were deployed to states neighboring Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to support Ukraine and contain the conflict. Over the course of the war, the total number of troops has ranged between approximately 75,000 and 105,000 military personnel, primarily from the Air Force, Army, and Navy.”
These troops didn’t fly economy with carry-on luggage. The oft cited rule-of-thumb is a deployed troop costs $2 million/year. I won’t quibble actual numbers deployed and costs, but let is suffice to say these deployments in response to the SMO have amounted to tens of billions.
What is the value of USA’s provision of battle management and ISR to keep the war going? Apparently it is essential because ATACMS, Scalps, Storm Shadows and Taurus can’t work without it. To provide 24/7/365 real time information from spy satellites over western Russia, Ukraine and eastern Europe I recall it requiring something like 20-25 satellites. These things cost couple billion a piece and have hundreds of people managing and analyzing for each satellite. How many people at Ramstein and the NRO are working on project Ukraine? Thousands is a reasonable assumption.
The US has kept the $30M MQ9 Reapers away from Crimea, but locally they have 150 personnel assigned to each — these are not cheap. Likewise for the $222M Global Hawks. Plus the E3s and P8s flying loops for 3 years. All this stuff is continuously airborne.
The new 155mm shell plant cost over half a billion to build and how much to operate? Mothballed missile production lines have been re-started. What else has been built in response? Would any of this happened without project Ukraine?
From my Sunday comment: “How about the black budget? The CIA established and staffed a dozen forward operations centers before the war even started. How much does it cost to build a dozen hardened facilities and staff them for a decade?”
The neo-economists want more war. They have mobilized effectively. They spread mis-information far and wide. Outlets like WaPo, NYT and FT add further “analysis”. These are probably the same group of neo-economists that assured everyone Russia was an empty shell and the sanctions would collapse the country in weeks. I don’t believe Trump’s accounting, but when the fully burdened costs are tallied, he is probably closer to the real number than the laughable numbers presented by the neo-economists.
“These troops didn’t fly economy with carry-on luggage.”
It seems you’ve never ridden in the back of a C-17.
Sorry, I don’t quite see the point of this post.
We haven’t spent as much at thought, therefore…. what? We keep the war game going? Keep the people dying?
From John Leake. (Makes as much sense as anything at this point, imo.)
Europe Wants War So It Can Sell Bonds
The financial logic of putting soldiers in harm’s way to sell bonds was a major mobilization driver in World War I.
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/europe-wants-war-so-it-can-sell-bonds
None of this will surprise anyone who has worked in government finance. The answer to the question “how much will this cost?” is often unwelcome to the political leadership, thus the instruction “make it look as if it costs less.” It’s entirely possible to do this, quite ethically, just by choosing slightly different sets of starting assumptions. (For example, the actual value of surplus stock you won’t be replacing is arguably zero, but because you can’t be sure that you won’t need to replace it, then maybe you’re justified in pricing it at replacement cost.) Conversely, when the US Army was trying to get out of its Bosnia commitment in the late 1990s, its reports to Congress systematically inflated the cost of the deployment by adding in all sorts of costs that arguably would have been incurred anyway.
An interesting aside: Joel Barnett, who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Budget Minister) in the 1974-79 Labour Government, was a highly-qualified accountant, and expected to teach these civil servants a thing or two about presenting figures. As he later wrote, he was “a babe in arms” compared to Whitehall, who could do things with numbers he never imagined. To his question “how much will that save,” the answer was “what do you want the figure to be Minister?”
In regards to quote from Joel Barnett it sounds like an episode of ‘Yes Minister’.
It is increasingly clear to us natives that the reality of UK governance for a long period of time is indeed reflected in ‘Yes Minister’.
This is where the seasoned bureaucrat is worth his/her weight in gold. Looking for someone to be the bill-payer, like FMS. Of course, your time sheets have to accurately show what time was spent on each case. On one of my programs, we had about 20 active FMS cases to account for.
All these make me wonder how “actual” defense spending by US compares to that by Russia or China. (Nevermind EU countries)…
All of this calculation of the “value” of U.S. “aid” to “Ukraine” is a ridiculous waste of time. The “Ukrainians” here only want to count the “value” of weapons in hand and conveniently don’t count the tactical, technical, intelligence, and logistical support. Trump’s probably got the numbers right, but “Ukraine” owes the U.S. nothing.
I think that Ian Welsh got it right in his piece yesterday: Ukraine’s government was effectively controlled by the West and pushed into a war it couldn’t win. …As for American claims that Ukraine used them, rather the other way around, they are without merit and beyond dishonorable.
Ever since their withdrawal from the USSR collapsed the Soviet Union, the “Ukrainians” have suffered from U.S.-fomented color revolution after color revolution. All run by unreconstructed Cold Warriors obsessed with kicking the Russian navy out of Sebastopol. America wrecked “Ukraine” from the beginning, just like they wrecked the Russian Federation for a decade. https://www.ianwelsh.net/understanding-americas-betrayal-of-ukraine/
There can be no question that a lot of Ukrainians have wanted to wage the war. An army that doesn’t want to fight, doesn’t fight (recent case: the Afghan army). The Ukrainians could not have fought a war for three years, suffering significant losses, against their own will.
As client states go, Ukraine has been a good one, from an imperial point of view, at least in terms of will-to-battle.
On the other hand, Ukraine is the worst, and the most dangerous, kind of client state: the sort which embroils their patron in wars against other major powers. Ukraine is also the sort of client state which develops a tentacular involvement in their sponsors’ domestic politics (concerning which, this very cost study is an example.)
Therefore, the USA should jettison Ukraine.
America should jettison USA. Everything else would fall into place.
Judge Napolitano and Mearsheimer. utube, ~5+ minutes
Professor John Mearsheimer: Lavrov & Russia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiBVTf0L2mk
Now that Rubio is openly calling this a proxy war, does it even make sense to describe anything sent to Ukraine as aid? Do countries “aid” their proxies, or do they just arm them?
After Aurelien’s comment, perhaps the answer to your question is “What do you wish the answer to be?”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03/new-analysis-from-economists-for-ukraine-the-cost-of-us-aid-to-ukraine-is-less-than-half-the-official-figures.html#comment-4186162
No, my point is that as fascinating as cost accounting questions can be, talking about “aid” mischaracterizes what’s going on. Better, would be, how much has the US spent in this proxy war? Then “what would you like the number to be” applies.
As to the use of numbers to obfuscate, I prefer the variation popularized by Mark Twain: There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics.
It’s anything but aid. Regular aid is supposed to help someone get better, while US aid does exactly opposite.
I am amused by the flexibility in assigning such figures — inflating them when they want to brag about how much support they are providing, followed by deflating them when they want to demonstrate that much, much more is needed.
Better lies, please …
The strong do what they can. The weak (Ukrainians) suffer (pay) what they must.