[Regnum] Financial support for the Kyiv regime is provided by 54 foreign states, the total amount of their expenses amounted to more than $203 billion, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on January 4, summing up the results of 2023.“54 countries are providing assistance. More than $203 billion have been spent,” said materials distributed by the Ministry of Defense.
Foreign states supplied the Ukrainian Armed Forces with more than 1,600 units of missile and artillery weapons, more than 200 anti-aircraft missile systems, more than 5,220 units of armored weapons and more than 23 thousand drones, the Ministry of Defense noted.
As Regnum reported earlier, the department also reported that more than 13,500 mercenaries arrived on the territory of Ukraine during the special military operation, about half of them (5,900 people) were destroyed and almost the same number (5,600) escaped.
In July 2023, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Western weapons supplied in large quantities to Kiev do not change the situation on the battlefield and only prolong the military conflict.
In December 2023, the US administration did not reach an agreement with the country’s Congress on allocating more than $60 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. Republicans demanded that the issue of allocating aid to Ukraine be linked to the solution to the problem of protecting the US southern border; the administration did not agree to this.
The US authorities are trying to shift multibillion-dollar expenses for maintaining the Ukrainian conflict onto the European Union, acting on the principle of “a thief steals a thief’s club,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in December 2023.
At the same time, in December 2023, Hungary blocked the allocation of 50 billion euros to Kiev from the EU budget in the period 2024–2027. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that he sees no point in allocating multi-year aid to Ukraine in conditions where it is unclear what will happen to the Kiev regime in three months.
There are at least three factors that contribute to a decrease in the volume of assistance from Western countries to Ukraine, noted political scientist, chairman of the Crimean regional public organization “Center for Political Education” Ivan Mezyukho in an interview with Regnum news agency. Western countries have already spent huge amounts of money on Ukraine, financing Ukraine has led to an internal political imbalance within Western states, and besides, the West already understands that it has lost the confrontation with Russia, the expert believes.