Funding tracker: Who’s sending aid to Ukraine?

With the war in Ukraine now in its second year, governments around the world have committed tens of billions of dollars in support to the country. Devex’s Funding Platform has recorded more than $265 billion in commitments for Ukraine in the first two years of the conflict. However, a relatively small percentage of that funding is humanitarian-focused. The Funding Platform tracks more than 850 sources of information about the largest funders around the world, including national governments, multilateral agencies, and the biggest philanthropic foundations. A search of the platform’s database reveals over $200 billion worth of grants and other contributions. The funding is primarily either for humanitarian activity or to maintain essential infrastructure in Ukraine. Funding primarily for military activity is not tracked. The last year is marked by significant European Union contributions to fund Ukraine through to 2027, including a €50 billion package, which contains a mix of loan and grant finance. But notable by their absence are similarly large United States contributions. American aid was the dominant factor in the first year of the war, with large contributions such as $4.5 billion via the World Bank announced in August 2022. But U.S. President Joe Biden has since been unable to push a $60 billion package of support through Congress, and the EU has long since surpassed the U.S. as Ukraine’s major backer. An analysis by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy says that Europe leads in financial support, humanitarian support, and help for refugees, with Poland and Germany the most generous countries. The United States has still provided more military support. Additionally, Devex’s analysis turned up just under $105 billion in loans and other repayable finance. This is likely to go on a mixture of maintaining the Ukrainian economy and fighting the war, with relatively little committed to humanitarian aid. This figure is significantly lower than reported in previous versions of this tracker, after we identified a number of duplicate commitments. On several occasions, money appears to have been pledged or announced several times — domestically, at conferences, at Group of Seven meetings, and by both bilateral and multilateral donors. The figures dwarf the level of support that has historically flowed to Ukraine. A Devex analysis in early 2022 found that total development funding for Ukraine was $1.8 billion in 2020, while humanitarian aid commitments totaled just $168 million. However, the scale of the need is considerable. The United Nations has said that around 14.6 million people in Ukraine will need humanitarian support in 2024. And Ukraine has said it is running a budget deficit of $5 billion per month. The country’s former minister of finance told Devex in the summer of 2022 that all the money received so far has been burned through. A mixture of loans and direct funding from the U.S., the EU, and multilateral agencies has so far kept Ukraine going. Refugee costs for Ukraine have also become an urgent issue. As of late February 2024, there were more than 6 million refugees in countries across Europe, particularly in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. The Kiel Institute records costs of more than €84 billion to support refugees. Notably, Ukraine is receiving considerably higher commitments than crises of similar magnitude around the world. An analysis published by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that in 2023 humanitarian assistance was far better funded in Ukraine than in Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Below are some sources of funding that Devex has identified so far, with updates to be added to this article regularly. European Union With a €50 billion commitment last year, the European Union and its member states have now become the largest funders of Ukraine, having lagged behind the United States for much of 2022. Compared to the U.S., the EU has contributed significantly more in budget support and humanitarian aid, and less in military support. In addition to humanitarian grant funding, the EU has provided several packages of loans and other finance, both directly and through the European Investment Bank. United States The U.S. government announced several packages of emergency funding for Ukraine early in the war, with the largest worth $40 billion, split relatively evenly between military support and humanitarian aid, according to The New York Times. The United States made limited commitments for 2023, in part because of a lack of unity in government. If U.S. funding matches its contributions in 2022, it may again become the largest funder of Ukrainian aid. However, its funding as a proportion of gross domestic product is actually lower than much of Europe, particularly if costs for hosting refugees are included. United Kingdom The U.K. has committed almost £12 billion ($1.7 billion) in total support for Ukraine, according to a government website, of which £7.1 billion is military aid, leaving something under £4.9 billion in humanitarian and financial support. However, the U.K. has come under fire after reducing other bilateral aid to meet its Ukrainian commitments. Germany Germany’s leaders faced criticism early on for not supplying enough arms to Ukraine and for taking a more cautious approach to the possible defeat of Russia. However, Germany has been relatively generous in supplying aid, starting with a €1 billion grant announced in May 2022. It is also hosting around a million Ukrainian refugees. When its share of EU aid is included, Germany has a claim to have contributed more GDP to the support of Ukraine than any other country except Poland and the Baltic states. World Bank Early in the conflict, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund announced packages worth $2.2 billion and $3 billion. Many other funding announcements have come from the two organizations since then, but in many cases this is money lent on behalf of sovereign governments, making it difficult to provide a picture of how much the two institutions have committed. Private sector Many private funders made money available early in the conflict. At $22 million, the IKEA Foundation provided the largest contribution to a $200 million funding announcement for the UN Refugee Agency. Other donors to this commitment include private companies ranging from Adidas to Cisco, as well as the actors Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. Tech giants Google and Meta — formerly known as Facebook — each announced $15 million in funding for Ukraine, although much of that will come in the form of credits allowing NGOs to advertise and raise money for free. However, Devex has not tracked significant new private donations since the early days of the war. Other tech companies have committed support in kind — most notably Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has donated Starlink satellites to beam internet access from space. The future funding of this work may come from the public sector, however. The general public Devex’s database does not capture money given directly to NGOs to provide humanitarian support for Ukraine, and limited data is available on how much has been donated in most countries. However, making an estimate is possible. In the U.K., the Disasters Emergency Committee has estimated how much money is being donated to emergency appeals, and this is likely to capture the majority of public giving. It said in February 2023 that £400 million has been raised so far. NGOs have launched similar appeals across the U.S. and the EU. If people across those areas have given at a similar rate, their public donations — combined with those in the U.K. — may total more than $5 billion. The DEC figure has risen by only £100 million since April 2022, however, suggesting that public giving has tailed off to effectively nothing. What’s missing? Each government announces funding for Ukraine in different ways and via multiple channels, therefore there is always scope that some funding may have been counted more than once. Every effort has been made to remove duplicate announcements from our count, however. Some other types of funding for Ukraine have not been captured in Devex’s Funding Platform and are therefore excluded from these estimates. First, many announcements of aid to Ukraine are primarily for military support. Those that contain a mixture of military and humanitarian aid have been omitted from this data. Second, Devex’s search centers on funding earmarked specifically for Ukraine, so it will not necessarily include funding for Poland, Hungary, and surrounding countries to support their work with Ukrainian refugees, nor does it necessarily include funding that countries have committed to supporting refugees within their borders. Where funding is specifically identified for the in-country costs of hosting refugees, it has been excluded from Devex’s funding tracker. Third, the data captured here includes only funding announcements and thus does not include grants, contracts, and tenders for services that might also go to Ukraine, although these are available on the database. Finally, while Devex tracks typical sources of aid money, many others that don’t usually provide such funding have come forward to give to Ukraine. Therefore, these may not be recognized in the Devex Funding Platform. A note on currency Donations to Ukraine have been made in many different currencies. Where pledges have been made in currencies other than U.S. dollars, Devex has converted those currencies into dollars to be able to provide a fair comparison. Given the shift in the value of the dollar throughout the war, conversions were done using the typical exchange rate for the month the donations were made. Miguel Antonio Tamonan, Alecsondra Si, Joshua Nicholas Paredes, and Ian Bautista contributed additional research to this article.