According to an analysis in the Washington Post, the United States has committed $60 billion in aid to the Kiev regime, more than $43 billion of which is military aid. The funding includes weapons, training, medical supplies, generators and rebuilding. And experts view the amount as a massive investment in a U.S. ally not seen since at least World War II. “These are off-the-charts numbers,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He likened the figures to U.S. commitments to European countries at the end of World War II. The Marshall Plan, when adjusted for inflation, came to about $150 billion over three years (but the Marshall Plan was to reconstruct Europe, not to seek the “strategic defeat” of Russia—ed.).
Not included in the Post analysis is the cost of American military operations in Europe, including some 20,000 combat troops deployed to NATO’s eastern flank in response to the start of Russia’s special military operation. That has to be in the range of some additional billions of dollars.
But the Post also reports that American popular support for backing Ukraine is falling. A June Pew Research Center survey found 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying the United States is giving too much aid to Ukraine. That has become a talking point among some GOP Senate candidates, as well as two of the party’s presidential front-runners.
“We could do it forever,” O’Hanlon said of this rate of funding Ukraine, going off the charts himself. “It’s not economically unsustainable (!). But it’s probably politically unsustainable.”
