18 Countries have Provided Non-Lethal Military Assistance to Ukraine Since 2014

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 3 – Since January 2014, 18 countries have provided 164.1 million US dollars’ worth of non-lethal military assistance to Ukraine, with more than 80 percent of that coming from just two countries, the United States which has given 117.6 million US dollars’ worth of supplies and Canada which has given 23.6 million.

            Those figures were provided to the Apostrophe portal by the Ukrainian defense ministry, which noted that there had been some weapons provided as well, by Lithuania among others, but that data about such transfers remain classified (apostrophe.com.ua/article/politics/2016-08-03/voyna-na-donbasse-kakie-stranyi-zapada-pomogali-ukraine/6566).

            The amount of non-lethal military assistance to Ukraine between January 1, 2014 and July 15, 2016 for the 18 in US dollars is as follows, the ministry said:

The United States   117,573,368

Canada                      23,641,521

Poland                        5,421,745

United Kingdom        4,975,847

Australia                    4,682,498

China                         3,400,000 

Turkey                       1,052,568

Slovakia                        774,543

Norway                         629,501

France                           594,020

The Netherlands           500,000

Spain                            258,419

The Czech Republic    245,782

Albania                        226,388

Lithuania                     116.201

Switzerland                   31,928

Latvia                            31.125 

Denmark                       21,300

            Commenting on this data, Sergey Zgurets, director of the Defense Express Information Consulting Company, said that this foreign assistance had “a very great political effect t the very beginning of the Russian intervention when it seemed that Ukraine was standing one on one with a nuclear power.”

            But “all countries tried not to cross a definite line in order not to provoke Russia to harsher methods of conducting military operations in the Donbass. More than that,” he said, it was important for Ukraine to rely as heavily as possible on its own resources given that it has a sizeable military industry.  There have been achievements there but much remains to be done.