The US announcement that it will suspend military aid to Ukraine has revealed a growing rift between the Washington and capitals in Europe, the latter of which spent much of the weekend trying to find a solution to Kyiv’s three-year-old war that did not involve capitulation to Moscow.
Outside of a several-month-long pause in late-2023 through to early-2024 where the then opposition Republican Party voted against US-Ukraine assistance packages under the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, Washington’s constant flow of aid to Kyiv has been critical, and regular.
These same Republicans are now in power in Washington.
Persistent fabrications by US President Donald Trump of the scale of US support to Ukraine have also been readily broadcast by US and international media, with few opposing voices calling out the White House’s unverified claims.
Trump says the value of US aid to Ukraine has been in the region of $350bn, when it is in fact much less.
According to the US Department of Defense, as of 8 January 2025, the date of the last confirmed US security assistance package to Ukraine, the US had provided more than $66.5bn in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including approximately $65.9bn since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Ukraine aid: an era of European rearmament
Further disinformation spread by US President Donald Trump is that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe. This can be quickly debunked, with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy stating Washington’s commitments from 24 January 2022 to 31 December 2024 ran to €114.2bn ($120.9bn) in allocated aid. Meanwhile, Europe combined has allocated €132.3bn in aid to Kyiv.
In addition, unallocated aid to Ukraine over the same period stood at €4.84bn for the US, versus €115.1bn for Europe. The US did greatly exceed European aid in the final months of the Biden administration, committing $26.8bn from October-December 2024, compared to €8.9bn from Europe.
The Kiel Institute also shows some 16 European countries provided a greater proportion of aid relative to their GDP than the US, topped by Estonia and Denmark at 2.5%. If the US had given a similar percentage of its GDP to Ukraine, Washington’s aid would have ranged from $550-600bn.
Speaking on 4 March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that Europe was in an “era of rearmament”, with the continent ready to “massively boost” defence spending.
To this end, the European Commission will propose the activation of the so-called ‘national escape clause’ of the Stability and Growth Pact, enabling European Union member states to significantly increase defence spending without triggering the Excessive Deficit Procedure.
If EU member states would increase their defence spending by 1.5% of GDP on average, this could create fiscal space of close to €650bn over a period of four years, von der Leyen said.
Secondly, a new €150bn in loans will be made available to EU member states for defence investment, particularly for joint procurement where multiple countries acquire the same platform. There are numerous examples of this, such as the CAVS armoured personnel carrier and Boxer armoured vehicle.
For Ukraine, this would mean a “massive” and “immediate” ability for EU member to step up their support, von der Leyen added.
Much of this is being done in a bid to break dependency on US arms acquisitions, in preference for European designed and manufactured systems.
