Trump says the U.S. has spent $350 billion on the war in Ukraine. Other tallies total far less.
Isabel Coles
February 26, 2025
The Wall Street Journal
President Trump says the U.S. has spent $350 billion on the war in Ukraine—a figure that is at odds with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s tally, as well as U.S. government agencies and Western think tanks. The cost of the war has been at the center of negotiations over a mineral-rights deal that would compensate the U.S. for its wartime assistance.
Ukraine agreed to the deal after the U.S. dropped its demand for up to $500 billion in revenue from mineral development there, according to people close to negotiations. That far exceeds the value of aid provided by the U.S., according to Zelensky, who puts the figure at $100 billion.
How much has the U.S. given to Ukraine?
Congress has voted through five bills appropriating a total of $175 billion for Ukraine in the three years since Russia’s invasion, according to a January report from the Congressional Research Service.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research group in Germany, has calculated that about $120 billion of the appropriated funds have been allocated to programs that directly support Ukraine. Of that amount, the U.S. has provided $67.3 billion in the form of weapons and other military assistance. Budget support—which helps Ukraine’s government pay the salaries of civilian government employees, healthcare workers and first responders—accounts for $49 billion. The remaining $3.6 billion was spent on humanitarian aid.
But a substantial portion of the $175 billion doesn’t directly support Ukraine. It pays for activities associated with the war, ranging from supporting a heightened U.S. force presence in Europe to responding to global food insecurity and assisting Ukrainian refugees in the U.S., according to the Kiel Institute.
Much of the money appropriated by Congress is spent in the U.S., where American workers at defense manufacturers are paid to make new weapons to replenish old ones sent to Ukraine from national stockpiles or provide Kyiv with new equipment. The U.S. has ordered hundreds of missiles for Patriot and Nasams air-defense systems, millions of rounds of ammunition and other equipment from domestic manufacturers, helping lead to record order books at these companies. European nations have also bought U.S. weapons to send to Ukraine or stocked up their arsenals with American equipment given the increased threat from Russia.
What about European countries?
The U.S. is by far the single most important donor country to Ukraine in absolute terms, particularly in terms of military aid. Collectively, however, European countries have provided
$138 billion in direct support for Ukraine, surpassing the U.S.’s roughly $120 billion, according to the Kiel Institute.
While Europe has allocated about $2 billion less military aid than the U.S., it has contributed $21 billion more in terms of financial and humanitarian funds, according to the institute.
After the U.S., Germany and the U.K. are the next biggest donor countries. Relative to the size of their economies, however, Scandinavian and Eastern European countries, as well as the Netherlands, have made the greatest contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.
In 2024, the European Union, the U.K. and Norway collectively supplied Ukraine with about $25 billion in military aid—more than the U.S. sent over the same period, according to European officials.
How has it been accounted for?
The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pentagon each have an inspector general responsible for tracking and investigating allegations of corruption or waste of American aid. A broader Ukraine Oversight Interagency working group was established with a mandate to ensure proper use of U.S. taxpayer money and reports regularly to Congress.
A report from the inspectors general of the departments of State, Defense and USAID last month acknowledged that Ukraine continued to struggle with “official corruption on multiple levels.” U.S. officials have previously said there is no evidence that any of the billions of dollars it has provided to Kyiv has been diverted, and they continue with Ukrainian ministries to implement anticorruption programs, including overhauls of defense procurement.
Some tallies don’t include pledges of future aid until they become concrete commitments. Some leave out funding for activities that don’t directly support Ukraine. And others focus on military assistance instead of broader financial and humanitarian aid.
It couldn’t be determined where the figure cited by Trump originates. It is higher than total aid allocations to Ukraine by all donor governments as calculated by the Kiel Institute, which put the figure at $280 billion as of December 2024. Zelensky said the war had so far cost $320 billion in total, of which Ukraine paid $120 billion, with the rest split equally between Europe and the U.S.
Isabel Coles is a reporter in London covering economics, with a focus on how changes in the economy impact lives and livelihoods. For a decade before that she reported from the Middle East. Beginning with the outbreak of the Arab Spring uprisings, her work tracked the upheavals across the region, from the early hopes for political change through the darker chapters of Islamic State’s takeover in Iraq and Syria. She covered the U.S.-backed military campaign against the organization and its aftermath, including the intensifying geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and Iran. Her stories often explore how people experience violent change and political upheaval. In 2020, she received an award from the Overseas Press Club of America for a series of stories about a Swedish man’s quest to recover his seven orphaned grandchildren from the ruins of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate. She was also a finalist for the
Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Before joining the Journal in 2017, Isabel worked for Reuters in the Gulf and Iraq. Her work during that period was part of a package that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. She began her career as a graduate trainee journalist with Reuters.