How Much U.S. Aid Is Going to Ukraine? | Council on Foreign Relations

Nine charts illustrate the extraordinary level of support the United States has provided Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.

Article by Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow

Last updated September 27, 2024 5:00 pm (EST)

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As the war in Ukraine continues in its third year, our initiative on securing Ukraine’s future is tracking the conflict with timely analysis and policy recommendations.

Every year, the United States sends billions of dollars in aid—much more than any other country—to beneficiaries around the world in pursuit of its security, economic, and humanitarian interests.

Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. This marks the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II.

Since the war began, the U.S. Congress has voted through five bills that have provided Ukraine with ongoing aid, doing so most recently in April 2024. The total budget authority under these bills—the “headline” figure often cited by news media—is $175 billion. The historic sums are helping a broad set of Ukrainian people and institutions, including refugees, law enforcement, and independent radio broadcasters, though most of the aid has been military-related. Dozens of other countries, including most members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), are also providing large aid packages to Ukraine.

It’s important to note that of the $175 billion total, only $106 billion directly aids the government of Ukraine. Most of the remainder is funding various U.S. activities associated with the war in Ukraine, and a small portion supports other affected countries in the region.

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A large share of the money in the aid bills is spent in the United States, paying for American factories and workers to produce the various weapons that are either shipped to Ukraine or that replenish the U.S. weapons stocks the Pentagon has drawn on during the war. One analysis, by the American Enterprise Institute, found that Ukraine aid is funding defense manufacturing in more than seventy U.S. cities.

Much of the U.S. aid has gone toward providing weapons systems, training, and intelligence that Ukrainian commanders need to defend against Russia, which has one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Most Western analysts say the military aid provided by the United States and other allies played a pivotal role in Ukraine’s defense and counteroffensive against Russia.

U.S. and allied leaders consider Russia’s invasion a brutal and illegal war of aggression on NATO’s frontier that, if successful, would subjugate millions of Ukrainians; encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revanchist aims; and invite similar aggression from other rival powers, especially China.

However, many supporters of Ukraine and some Ukrainian officials have faulted the United States and other donor countries for delays in critical weapons commitments as well as Western restrictions on how Ukraine can use those weapons. These critics say these lags have hampered Ukraine’s fighting abilities and allowed Russia to regain the battlefield initiative and retake territory along the eastern front.

NATO allies are particularly wary of being pulled directly into the hostilities, which could dramatically raise the risk of a nuclear war. However, as the fighting has progressed, many donor governments have shed their reluctance to give Ukraine more sophisticated assets, such as battle tanks and modern fighter aircraft. In the summer of 2023, the United States agreed to allow its European allies to provide Ukraine with U.S.-made F-16s. The first transfer of several of these advanced fighters occurred in late July—more than sixty have collectively been pledged to Ukraine by Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway.

More than two-and-a-half years into the war, the Joe Biden administration has provided or agreed to provide Ukraine with a long list of defense capabilities, including Abrams battle tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery shells, cluster munitions, coastal defense ships, and advanced surveillance and radar systems.

In early 2024, the Biden administration reportedly started supplying Ukraine with significant numbers of long-range precision missiles, known as ATACMS, that can strike targets nearly 200 miles (322 kilometers) away. However, the United States has restricted Ukraine from using these and other longer-range U.S. weapons on targets in Russia, concerned that such strikes would be escalatory. The administration loosened some of these conditions in recent months and was reportedly weighing a broader shift in U.S. policy. In September, Biden said he would provide Ukraine with Joint Standoff Weapons, a long-range munition sometimes referred to as a “glide bomb”.

When compared to U.S. assistance to other top recipients in recent years, the extraordinary scale of this aid comes into view.

Looking back over the last several decades, aid to Ukraine also ranks among the largest relative to the size of the U.S. economy at the time.

However, the magnitude of U.S. aid to Ukraine can seem less remarkable in comparison to what the Pentagon budgets each year, or what the Treasury Department was authorized (via the Troubled Asset Relief Program) to bail out Wall Street banks, auto companies, and other sectors of the economy during the U.S. financial crisis.

When compared to the critical support to Ukraine from other countries, the size of U.S. aid stands out.

However, many European governments are making larger financial contributions to Ukraine relative to the size of their economies.

Thirty countries have made major arms transfers to Ukraine in the past two years, led by the United States, Germany, and Poland. Nearly all are wealthy democracies.