U.S. Aid to Ukraine Eclipses Most World Military Budgets

The $113 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine has eclipsed the annual military budget of every country in the world except the United States and China.

The passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill grants Ukraine $45 billion in military and economic aid, making the total to date $113 billion.

The Quincy Institute’s Ben Freeman and William Hartung cataloged some of the ways that aid to Ukraine has exceeded many other of our own government’s expenditures and even other countries’ entire military budgets.

The Quincy Institute reported that aid to Ukraine eclipsed:

1. American aid to any country in one year since “at least” the Vietnam War
2. Russia’s 2023 $84 billion military budget
3. Every country’s military budget except for China and the United States
4. American aid for communities affected by drought, hurricanes, flooding, wildfire, and natural disasters — by $4 billion

American aid to Ukraine also nearly matches the combined baseline spending for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security combined.

It is almost as much as the $118 billion “the United States will spend on medical care for all U.S. military veterans.”

If Ukraine were an American state, it would rank 11th in terms of the amount of federal funding it receives.

“In other words, in the past 12 months Ukraine has been awarded more U.S. taxpayer dollars than 40 U.S. states,” Hartung and Freeman noted.

Congressional leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remain vigorously in favor of aid to Ukraine, despite Americans’ increasing skepticism of entanglement in Ukraine.

A Morning Consult poll found that 48 percent of registered Republican voters want to decrease the providing of foreign aid. The survey also revealed that 48 percent of Republicans want to decrease involvement in other countries’ affairs.

A December Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that inflation, economy and jobs, and immigration were the top issues for Americans, not Ukraine.

Hartung and Freeman argued that “it is well past time that Americans had a genuine conversation about just how much U.S. taxpayers should pay for this support.”

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.