Trumps 350 Billion to Ukraine is pure BS - let's do the real math

Comprehensively Valuing Ukraine AidAn Economic Approach

Lead Authors: Anastassia Fedyk (UC Berkeley) and James Hodson (AI for Good Foundation)

Economists for Ukraine Research Council: Tatyana Deryugina (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Yuriy Gorodnichenko (UC Berkeley), Ilona Sologoub (VoxUkraine/KSE)

Research Coordinator: Emilia Marshall (UC Berkeley)

Data Aggregation and Analysis were carried out by a team of 19 Research Assistants at UC Berkeley, Stockholm School of Economics, and Minerva University.

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All data for this analysis come from publicly available sources. The analysis will be updated on an ongoing basis as new data become available.

1. Overview

Since Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea and undeclared war in Ukraine’s East in 2014, the United States 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 United States stepped up and has been the single largest country-to-country provider of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, 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 generally accepted understanding of the United States aid to Ukraine does not correspond to reality, and this knowledge gap has been exploited to foster a growing rift and resentment between the allies.

We have performed an independent analysis based on publicly available data.

Our findings show 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 comprise military aid, and the remaining $32.6 billion is direct budget support in the form of expense reimbursement through the World Bank and collateral for loans. These figures—in particular, the military aid component—differ from the appropriation amounts by a factor of two to three. The US government has valued its military aid to Ukraine at $65.9 billion, whereas our estimate places it at $18.3 billion.

The discrepancy between the appropriation amounts and the values computed in our independent analysis stems from three main factors. First, the majority of US military aid to Ukraine has come in the form of existing equipment from US stockpiles. When we track every weapon provided and consider the vintage of these weapons, their full depreciation, and their failure rates (rendering equipment unusable by the US army), the value is at least 60% less. Second, where aid consisted of new equipment ordered, the US placed significant limitations on Ukraine’s choice of weapons and their use, and some of the equipment transfers have not yet occurred. Third, a substantial portion (approximately 25%) of the military aid was provided in the form of loans rather than grants. We discuss these factors in more detail in Section 3, after presenting some background information about US aid to Ukraine.