Two years after the start of the large-scale war, the dynamics of Western support for Kiev is losing momentum: newly pledged aid has decreased in the period from August 2023 to January 2024 compared to the same period the year before, according to the latest report of the Kiel Institute, published in February 2024. And this trend could continue, with the US Senate struggling to approve the aid and the European Union (EU) having had every difficulty in getting aid of 50 billion. adopted on 1eh February 2024 due to the Hungarian blockade. Please note that these two aid packages have not yet been taken into account in the latest assessment by the Kiel Institute, which ends in January 2024.
Data from the German institute show that the number of donors is decreasing and is concentrated around a core of countries: the USA, Germany, the countries of Northern and Eastern Europe, which promise both high financial aid and advanced weapons equipment. In total, since February 2022, the countries supporting Kiev have committed at least 276 billion euros in military, financial or humanitarian terms.
In absolute terms, the richest countries have been the most generous. The US is by far the leading donor, with more than 75 billion euros in aid announced, including 46.3 billion in military aid. The EU countries announced both bilateral aid (64.86 billion euros) and joint aid from EU funds (93.25 billion euros), for a total of 158.1 billion euros.
When we relate these contributions to the gross domestic product (GDP) of each donor country, the ranking changes. The United States has fallen to twentieth place (0.32% of its GDP), far behind neighboring Ukraine or former friendly Soviet republics. Estonia takes the lead in aid to GDP with 3.55%, followed by Denmark (2.41%) and Norway (1.72%). The rest of the top 5 is completed by Lithuania (1.54%) and Latvia (1.15%). The three Baltic states, all of which share borders with Russia or its ally Belarus, have been among the most generous donors since the start of the conflict.
In order of the percentage of GDP, France is twenty-seventh, having committed 0.07% of its GDP, just behind Greece (0.09%). Aid from Paris has been in steady decline since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – France was twenty-fourth in April 2023 and thirteenth in summer 2022.
