This week US President Donald Trump introduced yet another challenge for Ukraine and Europe, by suggesting that they should repay the US for the hundreds of billions of dollars in support the US has provided to Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion.
First things first, Trump has consistently spoken about the hundreds of billions of dollars in support the US has provided to Ukraine, and has signaled that he considers this to be over $300 billion. If that is indeed the case, it would be next to impossible for Ukraine to repay given it has a GDP of just over $200 billion. Even for Europe, stumping up $300 billion plus in repayments to the US would be a challenge, as that would be over 1% of European GDP. It also comes after Trump pulled all financial support for Ukraine upon assuming the presidency again in 2025.
That has left Europe with the task of all but fully covering the annual $100 billion bill for supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russian invasion – Japan and Canada, Sout Korea, and Australia do also provide significant sums in support of Ukraine, along with multilateral institutions, but the vast bulk of current support to Ukraine is from Europe.
Covering the $300 billion plus that Trump views the US is “owed” plus the annual circa $100 billion cost of supporting Ukraine would be challenging for Europe, and especially now given high debts and deficits, the cost of living crisis globally, plus now the rise of the pro-Russian far right in Europe.
Don’t fall off your seats – but I am going to make a statement here, that Trump does tend to exaggerate. Yes, shock n’ horror. And when it comes the claim of $300 billion plus in support for Ukraine the fact, real facts, don’t really stack up there. Someone is telling porky pies.
By far the best source of data on Western support for Ukraine comes from the Kiel Institute in its meticulous Ukraine Support Tracker. And here for the period from the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 to the end of June 2026, the Kiel Institute puts US support for Ukraine at €115 billion so around $133 billion in dimes and cents that Trump should be able to understand. Obviously this is a big and important number but it is substantially less than the $300 billion plus claimed by Trump. In terms of the breakdown, it comes out as: financial $55 billion, humanitarian $5.7 billion, and military $65 billion.
US support for Ukraine did indeed drop off a cliff upon Trump’s assumption of the presidency, amounting to zero allocations from January 2025 onwards.
By contrast, as the US stepped back, Europe and other Western allies stepped up. Thus, as of the end of June 2026 the EU and EM member states had provided $226 billion in support to Ukraine, the UK $26.1 billion, Canada $16.6 billion, Japan $14.1billion, Norway $13 billion, et al.
Note that as a share of GDP, US allocations have been dwarfed by other Western allies. The US has provided the equivalent of 0.58% of 2021 GDP on a cumulative basis. The comparable share for the UK is 1.23%, Sweden 3.47%, Norway 5.84%, Denmark 3.46%, Germany 1.28% and even Belgium 0.9%. The US actually comes at the low end of support to Ukraine relative to GDP.
On US support for Ukraine it is all a bit rich as much of the US military support for Ukraine has come from deliveries of surplus, old US military kit which was likely to be destroyed/replaced anyway. The US has not been providing Ukraine with top end, fifth generation kit. The US has meanwhile benefitted hugely from enormous Ukrainian and European funded purchases of US kit, which has likely come in multiples of the $65 billion in direct military support from the US.
The US has also benefitted hugely from the experience and know how gained from Ukraine’s use of US equipment in the war with Russia. This will surely make US equipment more effective. The war in Ukraine has also been a huge shop window for broader US defense sales – everyone now wants to buy US Patriot missile systems above say the Russian S400. Suffice to say Ukraine has created, or maintained, hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US.
One never knows when Trump is being serious, or just trying it on, but experience now suggests one should take Trump’s words at face value as the worst case outcomes tend to come to fruition.
Still if Trump expects Europe to repay even the $133 billon actually spent by the US supporting Ukraine that would significantly strain European finances and likely distract from the priority of funding Ukraine’s current war funding needs.
Unfortunately, Trump’s comment come as Ukraine’s war financing equation is again in some doubt. In this regard the prime minister, Serhiy Koretsky, this week suggested that Ukraine faced a $27 billion financing gap (I think all in, not just budget) this year, while his finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko suggested that the budget financing gap, agreed with the IMF, was some $32.6 billion.
It was not supposed to be like this, if you remember back to the EU Council decision in December 2025 which baulked at using the $300 billion plus in immobilized CBR assets in Western jurisdictions to fund Ukraine, and came up with a fix of a new €90 billion EU borrowing programme for Ukraine. The latter was supposed to assure Ukraine’s war financing through to 2028 and the next seven-year budget cycle when some €100 billion plus would be made available in pre-accession funds. I think on the latter the assumption was that the war would be over by then hence the financing costs much reduced.
As is, was, only €30 billion of the €90 billion EU borrowing was allocated to direct Ukraine budget support. The balance was earmarked for various Ukraine related military spending, and as is the way with the EU feeding trough, the temptation is always to try and secure funding for projects which are spent within EU member states, so the monies never actually turn up in Ukraine. So in not seizing immobilized CBR assets Ukraine was sold short. What a surprise.
Ukraine has also not covered itself in glory though, as IMF disbursements, and other multilateral and bilateral commitments linked have been stalled by the
Rada’s failure to pass key IMF prior actions. In the Rada Zelensky’s Servant of the People is now struggling to command a majority given all the various crises and scandals that the Zelensky president has endured.
Some IMF related funding has been delayed but that said, MOF data suggests budget funding from Western partners totally $28.9 billion for the first seven months of 2026 which is not that out of kilter with the monthly run rate for 2025 considering $52.2 billion was provided for the full year in 2025. True, that latter figure was bolstered by the $50 billion disbursement from the ERA, of which $38 billion was disbursed in 2025 and the remaining $12 billion in 2026, which provided a financing buffer at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, as Koretsky has noted, military spending in H126 was much higher than had been planned as the various deep strike drone projects are expensive.
What I think has happened over the course of 2026 are the cost of the war have increased and military support, not contained within the budget financing envelope, has dropped, as donor countries have tried to spend more at home. The result is that Ukraine has had to step up and write the checks to cover the shortfall.
For 2027 I assume the IMF et al are revising down their own macro assumptions for real GDP growth, which will have a revenue, deficit and financing gap implication. Likely the IMF will also have to extend out its assumptions for the timing of the end of the war - so a longer period to have to fund a $40-50 billion annual financing gap. Hence the need for another rethink on Ukraine’s budget financing needs and gaps.
And all the above does not assume Ukraine or Europe pays Trump back for the $133 billion spent as above by the US
Now a simple person like me would suggest that faced with another crisis/challenge around funding Ukraine, that the West needs to go back to the issue of seizing immobilized CBR assets for Ukraine. At the stroke of a pen, and that is all it takes in reality (it’s a political decision, not actually a legal decision, and anyone who tells you anything different is just falling for the lobbying from business interests in Belgium et al) this would allocate $300 billion plus to the defense of Ukraine, assuring its financing for the long term, and making the Russian tax payer pay. This would be the morally right thing to do and it would help take the wind out of the far right’s sails in Europe – likely the AfD, and FN, complaining about the cost of supporting Ukraine. How about they support a scenario when their buddies in Moscow pay for the war they started?
In reality little progress seems to have been made over the past ten months on the immobilized CBR asset issue from after the Belgium rear guard action back in December to block the move to seize these assets at the EU council meeting in that month. Note though that four countries (the Netherland, Sweden, Poland, and Spain) signed a letter over the past few weeks asking the EU to revisit the issue. And in France the issue seems to be getting on the political agenda as former PM, Gabriel Attal, came out in his own campaign for the presidency in support of going after immobilized CBR assets. Unfortunately Attal’s move follows a now long list of prime ministers who after leaving office come out in support of the move, but raising the question as to what they were doing when they were in office – reference here Johnson, Sunak, and now Attal. Not much I would wager.