The United States has committed tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in late February. Combined with other foreign aid, the total U.S. commitment has been nearly $54 billion.
Just this week, the Biden administration announced it was sending rockets to Ukraine that can more precisely take out long-range Russian targets. Russian leaders have warned that the move risks widening the ongoing conflict, Reuters reported, and “adds fuel to the fire.”
What has the U.S. been spending the billions of military dollars on so far? Some big-ticket items, as reported by the New York Times and the Associated Press, include:
- $6 billion to arm and train Ukrainian forces
- $8.7 billion to replenish stores of U.S. weapons that had been shipped to Ukraine, including javelin and stinger missiles and drones
- $8.1 billion for U.S. military deployments and intelligence
These expenses are a portion of the two packages Congress passed in March and May. The $54 billion tab is more than a quarter of Ukraine’s pre-war economy and is $6 billion more than the U.S. spent in all foreign and military aid combined in 2019, the Congressional Research Service said, according to the AP.
Most of the aid to Ukraine is going to traditional foreign aid for items like food assistance and refugee services. The traditional foreign aid portion alone, approximately $31.4 billion, is the highest annual amount the U.S. has spent on one country since 2010 — more than twice the aid given to Afghanistan in 2011, the largest aid drop over the last 12 years before now — the Times said.
The current aid levels to Kyiv stand in stark contrast to what the U.S. committed the last time Moscow made aggressive moves in Ukraine. From 2014 to 2021, after Russia annexed Crimea, the U.S. sent just $2.7 billion in military aid, the Washington Post reported.
As the current war continues, time will tell how much more the U.S. will commit.
