The data compiled by German research firm Statista showed that US military aid to Ukraine up to mid-January, covering the first 11 months of the conflict, totaled $46.6 billion.
That compared with an average annual military spend of $43.4 billion, in 2022 dollars, during the first ten years of the Afghanistan war, said Statista citing data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
“When calculating the average annual costs of previous wars in which the United States has been involved in, the true magnitude of the country’s Ukraine aid expenditure can be seen,” Statista data journalist Martin Armstrong said. The Ukraine total doesn’t include an additional $5 billion worth of weapons and equipment that the Pentagon sent to Kiev, he said.
The figures however exclude non-military aid, such as the $4.5 billion that US President Joe Biden pledged to fund pensions, government salary and another public spending. In total, the United States has allocated $113 billion in Ukraine aid, and multiple administration officials have vowed to keep supporting Kiev “as long as it takes.”
Americans have sent more money to Ukraine than Russia spends on its annual military budget. Russia spends about US$65 to 70 billion a year. The US sent more than $100 billion, including non-military aid, and plus there are the other NATO countries and those in Asia too.
A number of US lawmakers, such as Representatives Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene have called the Ukraine conflict a “proxy war” that the US and NATO are waging against Russia.
Greene called the war in Ukraine “a deadly profitable industry” and demanded the US withdrawal from the NATO military alliance.
“The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO & our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one. We should pull out of NATO,” said Greene while referring to the Biden administration’s massive military aid to Ukraine as a “proxy war” against Russia that Americans have no appetite for.
Ukraine is the “new Iraq wrapped up with a pretty little NATO bow, with a nuclear present inside,” she further added in a series of tweets in which she has expressed fierce criticism of Washington’s response to the Ukraine conflict by sending billions of taxpayer dollars to the country and risking a potential nuclear war.
Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with a declared aim of “demilitarizing” Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics. Back in 2014, the two republics, which are predominantly Russian-speaking, broke away from Ukraine, prompting Kiev to launch a bloody war against both regions. The years-long conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, mostly in the Donbas.
Since the onset of the conflict between the two countries, the United States and its European allies have unleashed an array of unprecedented sanctions against Russia and poured numerous batches of advanced weapons into Ukraine to help its military fend off the Russian troops, despite repeated warnings by the Kremlin that such measures will only prolong the war.
The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, despite the fact that no Afghan national was involved in the attacks. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans died in the US war of aggression on the country.
American forces had occupied the country for about two decades on the pretext of fighting against the Taliban. But as the US forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban stormed into the capital Kabul in August 2021, weakened by continued foreign occupation.
The Taliban took over the capital Kabul on August 8, 2021, and declared that the war in Afghanistan was over.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans died in the US war on the country and its irresponsible withdrawal is also leading to a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn state.
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