How much funding went to Ukraine in the first year of the war?

Feb. 24 marks the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine. During the past year, aid worth tens of billions has flowed from donor nations. But how much? From whom? And what impact has it had on the development sector? An analysis published earlier this week by a team of researchers from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, known as IFW, breaks down all spending up to mid-January, and shows more than €67.2 billion ($71.3 billion) of commitments that might count as official development assistance. This aid falls into three main groups: €12.1 billion in humanitarian support, €27.8 billion in grants for direct financial support, and €27.3 billion for supporting refugees. The refugee figure covers only the period to the end of 2022, and IFW estimates that a similar amount will be spent in 2023. IFW also identified two other major sources of spending on Ukraine — €37.5 billion in loans and other non-grant finance from bilateral donors, and €65.3 billion of military support. Ukraine has also received significant loan finance from multilateral institutions, including significant sums from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which are excluded from the IFW figures. Who has given the most? The United States has delivered the most aid to Ukraine — €73.2 billion. But the majority of that aid has been military, with €44.3 billion in funding compared to €28.8 billion of humanitarian spending. When it comes to humanitarian and development aid, Europe has been the bigger contributor. The European Union and its member states have contributed €54.9 billion, while other European countries have contributed $9.8 billion, for a total European contribution of €64.7 billion, of which €19.1 billion is military and €45.6 billion non-military. When the cost of supporting refugees is added in, total European spending rises to €92 billion, and non-military spending to €72.9 billion. When viewing aid as a percentage of GDP, the most generous countries are all close neighbors of Ukraine, and countries which have previously faced Russian hegemony themselves. Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechia and Lithuania all spent more than 1% of their GDP on supporting Ukraine, compared to 0.37% for the U.S. 0.35% for Germany, and 0.32% for the U.K. The IFW tracker also reveals that the knock-on costs of the war have been far greater than direct aid spending from European countries, with Germany alone spending €264 billion on energy subsidies and an additional €100 billion on strengthening its own military. The tracker also finds that less has been spent on Ukraine than on previous conflicts. For example the United States spent nearly three times as much on the Gulf War in 1991, as a percentage of GDP, as it spent on supporting Ukraine in 2022. What is the potential impact on the development sector? The war in Ukraine has had many indirect impacts. Some of these are financial, in areas such as food and energy prices, inflation and debt, while others are geopolitical, and affect the environment in which aid is delivered. But the most obvious direct impact is how spending on Ukraine has come to dwarf all other development priorities. Total ODA in 2021 was $185.9 billion, and given the double-digit inflation that has occurred in the last 12 months, largely as a result of the war, this figure should be more than $200 billion in 2022 if spending were to remain constant in real terms. On this basis, aid to Ukraine could in theory comprise up to 35% of all ODA, although there are reasons to expect it will be lower in practice. First, not all financial assistance and not all refugee costs may count as ODA. And second, it is not clear how much aid to Ukraine will be additional to existing ODA, and how much will be cut from elsewhere. Even with those provisos, spending on Ukraine continues to be far higher than other major crises. In 2022, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued multibillion dollar emergency appeals in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Of these the best funded was Afghanistan, which received $3.8 billion. For the development sector, one question is how much Ukraine will divert attention away from these other crises, and from other causes. Will the war focus attention on the need for development, or will it lead to funding cuts that hurt the sector for many years to come?