Two years after the start of the large-scale war, the dynamic of Western support for kyiv is losing momentum: newly committed aid is down over the period from August 2023 to January 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year, according to the latest report from the Kiel Institute, published in February 2024. And this trend could continue, the American Senate struggling to pass aid, and the European Union (EU) having had all the difficulties in getting aid of 50 billion adopted on 1is February 2024, due to the Hungarian blockade. Please note, these two aid packages are not yet taken into account in the latest assessment made 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 United States, Germany, the countries of northern and eastern Europe, which promise both high financial aid and advanced weaponry. In total, since February 2022, the countries which support kyiv have committed at least 276 billion euros on the military, financial or humanitarian level.
In absolute terms, the richest countries have been the most generous. The United States is by far the leading donors, with more than 75 billion euros in aid announced, including 46.3 billion in military aid. European Union countries announced both bilateral aid (64.86 billion euros) and joint aid from European Union 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), well behind countries neighboring Ukraine or former friendly Soviet republics. Estonia takes the lead in aid relative 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, which all share borders with Russia or its ally Belarus, have been among the most generous donors since the start of the conflict.
In the ranking of the percentage of GDP, France is twenty-seventh, having committed with 0.07% of its GDP, just behind Greece (0.09%). The aid provided by Paris has been in constant decline since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – France was twenty-fourth in April 2023, and thirteenth in the summer of 2022.
