The European Union must double its support for Kiev if the US Congress continues to block the aid planned by the White House, according to the Kiel Institute
The European Union (EU) must double its military aid to Ukraine to make up for U.S. failures, a new amount that has been blocked in Congress for months, the Kiel Institute warned on Friday.
“It is highly uncertain whether the United States will send additional military aid in 2024,” estimates the institute, which lists military, financial and humanitarian aid promised and delivered to Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, as of January 15, the USA sent military aid worth 42.2 billion euros to Ukraine between February 2022 and December 2023, or around 2 billion per month.
The EU, for its part, has pledged 49.7 billion euros in military aid since the start of the war, but so far only 35.2 billion euros have been made available for specific weapons and equipment.
“Europe will have to at least double its current military aid if there is no additional help from the USA,” warns Christoph Trebesch, who leads the Kiel institute team responsible for monitoring aid to Ukraine.
“It is a challenge, but ultimately it is a question of political will,” adds Trebesch. European Union countries are among the richest in the world and have so far spent less than 1% of their GDP on supporting Ukraine in 2021. »
In total, 265.1 billion euros have been promised to Ukraine since February 2022, including 141.3 billion in financial aid, 107.5 billion in military aid and 16.3 billion in humanitarian aid.
The largest donors are the EU and its members (144.1 billion), the United States (67.7) and the United Kingdom (15.7). But here too, the gap between commitments and the amounts actually made available is large, especially for the European Union, which has so far only provided 77.2 billion euros in aid. This discrepancy is explained by the fact that the funds released by the EU are usually released for several years.