US President Donald Trump’s rogue pro-Kremlin stance could blast a deadly £53billion hole in Ukraine ’s defences if he keeps it up.
Despite Ukraine apparently striking a deal to allow the US to gain revenue from access its mineral resources, their president Volodymyr Zelensky will have his work cut out when he meets Trump this week in a bid to charm him away from the Russian sphere of influence. Vladimir Putin could see the road clear to Kyiv should his dream of America pulling its support come true.
From £800m Patriot air defence systems, thousands of £120,000 Stinger a-shot missiles to a staggering 50 million bullets, America has shored up Ukraine’s war. America’s war-aid includes Mi-17 helicopters costing £28m each, £8 million Abrams Tanks, 100 river patrol boats, Claymore mines, body armour, night vision goggles and medical kits. The breathtaking file of US weapons being supplied to Ukraine’s troops reads like an apocalyptic shopping list of killer explosives and life-ending projectiles.
Despite Ukraine’s amazing resourcefulness and the bravery of its troops, they have been given a terrifying arsenal of weapons too great to list entirely. There are over 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and ammunition, Ground-Launched Bomb launchers and guided rockets; More than 200 155mm Howitzers and more than 3,000,000 155mm artillery rounds Russian positions have been ripped apart with more than 7,000 US -supplied precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds; over 100,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems; one million 105mm artillery rounds.
And that’s just the conventional 105 artillery shells of the kind you see in war films. Other artillery rounds of a different type come to 490,000 artillery rounds and many other systems have been sent by the Pentagon. The frontline has gobbled up a staggering 60,000 US 122mm GRAD rockets; more than 300 mortar systems; close to a million mortar rounds. Ukrainian troops received over 10,000 Javelin anti-armour systems; at least 120,000 other anti-armour systems and munitions; 50,000 grenade launchers and anti-tank mines.
And that just scratches the surface of US supplies for Ukraine’s ground warfare. Our figures for US expenditure on military aid to Ukraine have been converted from dollars to pounds. But the US State Department’s Bureau of Political Military Affairs announced in January: “To date, we have provided $65.9 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and approximately $69.2 billion in military assistance since Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. We have now used the emergency Presidential Drawdown Authority on 55 occasions since August 2021 to provide Ukraine military assistance totalling approximately $27.688 billion from DoD stockpiles.”
Putin’s maritime fleet has also come under fire from US -supplied weaponry, with Ukraine’s marines and special forces teams getting two Harpoon coastal defence systems and a huge amount of anti-ship missiles. The US gave Kyiv’s troops over 100,000 sets of body armour and helmets; surveillance and thermal imagery systems, optics, and rangefinders. They gave military equipment to protect critical national infrastructure; bomb disposal gear and even Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment.
Medical supplies, including first aid kits, bandages, monitors, and other equipment. And that is just the equipment coming from the US. Europe, including the UK, has contributed even more to Ukraine, with Britain alone providing roughly a total of £12billion of military and non-lethal aid. That includes 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks, terrifyingly accurate Storm Shadow and Brimstone missiles, anti-drone radars and combat vehicles.
But if the US Premier dumps Kyiv and maintains his Putin-friendly posture, the blow will leave a yawning chasm, a future-threatening hole in Volodymyr Zelensky ’s military might. With western help, much of it American, it is estimated his resourceful troops have smashed over 9,000 Russian tanks and taken 800,000 of Moscow’s fighters out of the battle. More than 3,000 US Stinger missiles have brought down Russian helicopters and warplanes at around £25,000 a-pop.
And incredibly US-supplied £1 a-bullet rifle-fire or 30p a-bullet handgun shots have also taken a toll on Russian forces after Ukraine was trained by US and UK troops, with the training -all coming at a cost. The US lethal contribution to Ukraine is far more complex than Trump’s simplistic transactional approach to the flow of arms into Ukraine. Some comes in the form of old weaponry that would otherwise cost the US an enormous amount to destroy, some is in cash, controlled by American agencies to buy the weapons.
Rather than being destroyed they are being blasted at Russian forces in a grisly cost-benefit equation, a kind of proxy deal, that is a no-brainer to the US government. So the pumping of arms into the Ukraine frontline can also benefit the US economy by saving money whilst feeding its weapons manufacturing industry. For the most part the money does not go from the States to Ukraine and the purchasing of weapons is done in-house by US agencies and paid to US companies. The US also paid a similar amount of over £50 billion in military aid to Ukraine in the years following the post Maidan Revolution Russian invasion of Crimea and incursion into the east.
To be clear, America’s contribution to Ukraine’s brave defence is crucial to Kyiv and the rest of the continent and European governments boosting defence spending at rapid speed. The pressure on the UK government quickly to increase defence spending has prompted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s to pledge a rise from its current 2.3% share of the economy to 2.5% in 2027. Trump would prefer 5% from us and British defence chiefs are rapidly examining how effectively to spend the money appropriately but at pace.
Estimating which weapons will be needed in the years to come far beyond the Ukraine frontline and possibly to defend the UK and its interests is an enormous task. Weapons can become obsolete but sanctions against Russia have been effective to a degree. Optics for Moscow’s tank gun sights were hit by sanctions as the Kremlin’s bid to chicane around the ban on selling optics to them meant buying inferior technology.
As one Ukrainian arms expert told me last year: “This meant that tanks accurate to fire seven miles were only accurate to half of that distance. “So you can see how sanctions, even though they can be avoided illegally, can have a deadly result on the battlefield.”