The European Union has provided Ukraine with €4 billion in aid in recent weeks.
“The European Union has been providing Ukraine with multibillion-dollar economic and humanitarian assistance since the first day of the invasion.
Let me give you a figure: in the last ten weeks alone, we have spent €4 billion on it,” said the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a congress organized by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
According to her, Europe also cares about refugees from Ukraine, whose number in the EU was estimated at 5 million. The head of the EC also recalled the unprecedented step of Brussels, which financed the purchase of weapons for the Ukrainian army for €1.5 billion.
“This is the first time the European Union has taken such a step,” von der Leyen said.
She added that the EU continues to put sanctions pressure on Russia to drain its sources of income.
“This is much more than just a stress test for our economy,” said the head of the European Commission.
Head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen
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Von der Leyen also noted that in the context of the situation in Ukraine, "a lot is at stake for Europe."
In particular, she believes, European values are allegedly upheld there now, and the whole world is following this.
Financial injections
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal also spoke about financial support from the West, speaking on May 5 at a donor conference in Warsaw dedicated to collecting aid for Kyiv.
“Since the beginning of the large-scale war, Ukraine has received more than $12 billion in support in the form of weapons and financial assistance,” he said.
Shmygal also noted the readiness of the allies to continue to provide assistance to the republic even after the end of the conflict.
For a more convenient organization of this process, Ukraine is launching the United24 fund, the Prime Minister said.
According to him, the country's authorities expect that it will be replenished from five sources: funds from partner states and international financial organizations, assistance from large international corporations, transfers from international humanitarian organizations and charitable foundations, contributions from individuals, as well as from confiscated foreign Russian assets.
According to Shmyhal’s assessment, presented in an interview with the American CBS television channel on April 24, in the short term, Ukraine needs monthly financial assistance in the amount of $4-5 billion.
“We are actively negotiating with the G20 countries, with the finance ministers of these countries, with the international financial organization, with the IMF and the World Bank.
They all approved this amount, and everyone feels that humanitarian assistance is needed for internally displaced persons, ”he said then.
From Shmyhal's point of view, Russia's assets frozen in the West should be transferred to the needs of Ukraine, which could become "an excellent precedent."
“The common goal for the entire civilized world is to find a solution on how to use these frozen assets, and in this case (at their expense. -
RT
) finance the restoration of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian prime minister said.
On April 28, in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Minister of Finance of the republic Sergei Marchenko spoke with similar views.
At the same time, he said that the Kyiv authorities even managed to agree on appropriate funding with Western partners for the next three to four months.
However, he called it a "difficult question" how these needs would be met.
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In turn, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said at a donor conference in Warsaw that a strategic international support plan should be developed for the republic, which will be "a modern analogue of the historical Marshall Plan."
“This will be an investment in the stability of the entire center and east of Europe,” he said.
Zelensky also invited Western partners to take patronage over the regions, cities and industries of Ukraine affected by hostilities.
“Such a patronage project can create a new and equally historic example of interaction and partnership between the states of the free world, between regions, cities and companies in Europe and democratic countries,” he explained.
Fueling the war
Ukraine is also actively continuing to support Ukraine with weapons, for which, in particular, the United States has already spent over $4 billion and is planning new allocations of $33 billion for the next five months, of which $20.4 billion is allocated for military assistance.
As State Department spokesman Ned Price noted at a briefing on May 5, the United States retains the ability to freely supply weapons to Ukraine.
In addition, US President Joe Biden is expected to sign a lend-lease bill for Ukraine on May 9, which was approved by Congress at the end of April.
Finland promised to increase military assistance to the republic, and Italy, Germany and Great Britain expressed their readiness to continue deliveries of arms.
In Russia, the pumping of Ukraine with Western weapons has been criticized more than once.
In particular, Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, stressed at a meeting of the organization's Security Council that in this way the West is turning Ukraine into a "bridgehead for the battle with Russia."
Nominal Assistance
The financial assistance provided by the West to Ukraine is in fact not enough, according to experts interviewed by RT.
In the context of ongoing hostilities, which Western countries are only spurring on by the supply of weapons, these funds are only enough for the urgent needs of the republic.
“Kyiv today does not have its own funds to pay salaries, solve utility problems and other issues related to the daily life of citizens, as well as restore the economy.
Therefore, the volumes of financial assistance that come from the West do not fundamentally change the situation.
The economy of Ukraine will continue to fall and, in fact, crash, ”said Sergey Margulis, senior lecturer at the Department of International Politics and Foreign Regional Studies at the Institute of Social Sciences of the RANEPA, in an interview with RT.
In this regard, he believes, all statements by representatives of Brussels and Washington about their intention to help Ukraine further are nothing more than political slogans.
“After all, none of them makes attempts to influence Kyiv so that it agrees with Moscow on the end of hostilities.
On the contrary, the statements of Washington and Brussels that Europe is interested in the victory of Ukraine speak exclusively of the militaristic moods of the West and reduce these talks about the future restoration of Ukraine, in fact, to the level of banal populism,” the analyst explained.
Mikhail Krivoguz, a leading researcher at IMEMO RAS, shares a similar opinion.
In an interview with RT, he noted that the promises to Kyiv about the post-war restoration of the country are still only an empty phrase, since the West has its own vision of the future of the republic.
“Ukraine is primarily a lever of pressure on Russia, so the West is helping it not out of humanistic motives, but because it wants to maintain tension on Russian borders for as long as possible,” the expert says.
In turn, the head of the department of Ukraine of the Institute of CIS Countries, political scientist Ivan Skorikov believes that Ukraine, in fact, has lost its sovereignty.
Therefore, as he noted in a RT commentary, the republic should not have illusions about the West's interest in it as an independent state.
“Ukraine is not a state, but a project that is supported at the level necessary for its survival and the function of a battering ram against Russia.
That is why, for all eight years of its existence as a Western protégé, despite all the funding and subsidies, Ukraine has not become a European country,” says Skorikov.
In this regard, the current financial flows are only a necessary, in the opinion of the West, minimum, which will keep Ukraine afloat.
“And Western countries are now investing not in Ukraine, but in their own weapons, which it has become.
After all, they perfectly understand that Kyiv is not able to ever repay the accumulated loans.
So all the talk about the interest of the US and the EU in the restoration of Ukraine is a fiction,” the expert concluded.