So far Europeans have given more aid to Ukraine than the US.
Here‘s a statistic:
How much has each country given to Ukraine? The U.S. provided the highest bilateral aid to Ukraine as of May 2023, at nearly 71 billion euros.
www.statista.com
You can see that if you add the EU Institutions, UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, you get a total of 70 billion euros, which equals the amount given by the US.
Now you can add all other European countries and the aid is obviously more than that of the US.
There are also additional considerations, such as European countries receiving millions of Ukrainians as refugees, providing them a safe place and in many cases jobs and money, so that they can support the Ukrainian economy going forward. This kind of help is not included in the above numbers.
You can also add the fact that European military help has been represented by larger quantities of cheaper weapons, instead of overly expensive systems that boost the numbers but don’t provide nearly as much utility in the war. All the Soviet era weapons and munitions provided by Eastern European countries don’t have a high market value, but have been extremely important for the Ukrainian war effort. They are probabaly all valued together as much as a single Patriot air defence system, but their impact on the war is obviously much bigger.
What I am trying to point out here is that the US is inflating its numbers to look good, but in the end most of the money is recycled through the US economy as they are spent buying ovely expensive US systems.
The pound for pound help measured in numbers of vehicles, weapons and ammunition greatly favors the Europeans.
My point is more focused on the hard military aid, since thats what keeps ukraine political survival and sovereignty.
Humanitarian aid and so on could/would be provided whatever the existence status of Ukraine (in the worst case scenario reference....to both folks living under occupation there and the refugees that have fled to other countries, mostly Europe as it would make most sense).
But when I look at things like this:
The Ukraine Support Tracker lists and quantifies military, financial and humanitarian aid promised by governments to Ukraine.
www.ifw-kiel.de
Six charts illustrate the extraordinary level of support the United States has provided Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.
www.cfr.org
Opinion: Congress should explain how this money advances the US's vital national interests or develop a new plan.
www.businessinsider.com
Why exactly is such low interest on the matter being taken by countries like France, Italy and Spain?
Their commitments all range in the 0.4 - 0.7 billion USD when it comes to military aid.
Scaling to GDP, that would be like US giving something like 4 billion USD in military aid to Ukraine so far and having maybe another cpl billion in the pipeline (if it had the attitude of France here).
When France is literally far closer to Ukraine battlefield consequences than the US is.
Given political environment shaping up in US, European countries should at least hold these others to account.
A great deal of damage was already done by European countries (by their own logic now) in not taking the first intervention by Russia in 2014 seriously, and continuing a whole host of economic investments and trade with them as normal (if we are to apply some expectation of foresight from the logic and foreign policy developed today by same countries).
Your argument that the US provision numbers are "inflated" and just being "recycled" somehow is not one I take seriously, lets leave it at that.
Firstly these are things being
given to Ukraine....and they are happy to have it. Lets get that clear.
NATO military equipment being expensive compared to what former eastern bloc countries have to donate from former arsenals (and this being "cheaper" meaning US donation is inflated cost) is also a bad argument.
NATO militaries invest these costs to win wars (quickly) of a completely different nature to the one that can be sustained in Ukraine now.
i.e NATO is unable to/uwilling to get into the kind of sanitised approach they would otherwise bring to bear with air and naval forces to best maximise mostly ground force equipment and general munitions being sent to Ukraine...along with the piecemeal things done for air and navy (given ukraine force structure being extremely low here).
This is large reason why Biden incompetently let it slip that there is a munition issue surfacing for the US own stockpile and basic own needs for other world theatre risk analysis.... (i.e their military capacity just wasnt designed for this kind of stuck war and its imposing needs on say artillery for little ground gain....given the delegation by NATO to say the airforce to take care of this far more optimally)....as part of the reason why cluster munitions are being sent now compared to say regular H.E.
This is why Europe collectively should have taken care of itself from 2014 especially far more realistically and practically....compared to route it overall elected for from 2014 - 2022....given it shares the same continent and should know the Russian psyche much more than the average American upstream to a politician does here... (just ask a Finn or Polish for example).
In Germany case as just one example, start LNG supply analysis with alternatives, give as little investment to Russia as possible, help build up Ukrainian capacities (in say its AF seriously for the longer term) and make the hard choices on spending to the German military needs so you dont have half or more of your PzH 2000 in unready mothballed state.
Backfilling all of this now by a war NATO is not really geared for means you get relatively high costs, low results and stuff like ammo and munitions running out over time when theres frontline stagnation.... because its all transfered to Ukraines own final tier wherewithal and capacity....which while tough and resilient one lacks a great many things to get these operating like NATO envisaged in its own case...both at scale and depths.
Then the hard military back filling itself is done in very limited way by some large economies + large militaries of Europe relative to US.
This is making the argument lot harder than it needs to be to sustain for folks here that wish Ukraine well....especially in times its going to take to ramp up investment of the kind of munitions this new kind of war demands from NATO earlier wargamed analysis w.r.t reliance on what I mentioned earlier (making the frontlines move with heavy AF use and keeping the war much shorter in duration and not an artillery slogfest for 2 years or however long its going to be).
There are an incredible number of people that dont care about Ukraine much or even love Russia in whatever way here (mostly some social conservative identification or pro-isolationist, pro realist approach or even far left tankies actively seeking to undermine US that they live in)..... that are acting in concert on this side of the pond......that will have political ramifications that Europe should have been preparing a long while ago, not just now.
They look at every minute detail and wage war of attrition on US support to Ukraine....to gain every bit of room they can in the grey area of general support that still exists in the population.
I'm just telling you (well all of you, your reply just gave me an opportunity to air this out) the hard reality of the situation I sense thats changed since last year.
has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine valued at $400 million usd. The contents of the package include the following.
apnews.com
has also approved new a military aid package to Ukraine worth $221 million usd. The contents of the package were not disclosed but it touches several key areas including both lethal and non-lethal aid, training and repair work.
