Ukraine

Approximate read time: 4 minutes 

Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, the UK has committed £15bn of support to Ukraine, including the UK’s £2.26bn extraordinary revenue acceleration (ERA) loan contribution.[1] This includes £10bn in military assistance and £5bn in non-military support. The government has also pledged £3bn of military support per year until 2030/31.

The UK’s £5bn non-military assistance includes £4.1bn in fiscal support through World Bank loan guarantees to support Ukraine’s economic stability, and £977mn in bilateral assistance to support energy, humanitarian, reform, recovery, reconstruction and stabilisation programmes, plus a further £282mn commitment for 2024/25.

Since 2022/23, the government has spent at least £2.3bn per year on military support for Ukraine, as shown in table 1. According to the National Audit Office’s ‘Investigation into military support for Ukraine’, the amount spent in 2022/23 (£2.46bn) was higher than the publicly announced figure (£2.3bn), due to higher-than-expected replacement costs for UK equipment donated to Ukraine.[2]

Table 1. Annual spending on UK military support for Ukraine

Year Pledged (£bn) Spent (£bn)
2021/22 – 0.03
2022/23 2.3 2.46
2023/24 2.3 2.29
2024/25 3.0 3.00
Total 7.6 7.78

(National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into military support for Ukraine’, 11 September 2024)

In addition to this £7.8bn in military assistance, the UK is also contributing £2.26bn to the extraordinary revenue acceleration (ERA) loans scheme. This 2024 scheme extends US$50bn of loans to Ukraine, to be repaid using the revenues from frozen Russian assets in the EU and G7 countries. The UK’s first instalment, for £752mn, was disbursed in March 2025.[3]

Figure 1. Share of ERA loan to Ukraine

A bar chart comparing the amount of ERA loan being lent by the UK compared with other G7 lenders. The UK, Japan and Canada are contributing around US$10bn of the loan, while the EU and the US are contributing around US$20bn each.
(G7, ‘Annex to the G7 finance ministers’ statement on extraordinary revenue acceleration (ERA) loan initiative’, 25 October 2024)

According to the Kiel Institute’s ‘Ukraine support tracker’, 34 countries had provided military assistance to Ukraine from February 2022 to December 2024.[4] The UK was the third-largest provider of military support, behind the US and Germany, as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. 10 largest providers of military aid to Ukraine, February 2022 to December 2024

A bar chart showing the ten biggest contributors to military support for Ukraine. The chart shows that the UK has committed the third most military aid to Ukraine, behind the US and Germany, although the US has committed more military aid than the other countries combined.
(Kiel Institute for the World Economy, ‘Ukraine support tracker’, updated 14 February 2025)

The UK has supplied Ukraine with a range of military equipment including lethal and non-lethal weapons and made over 3,000 deliveries of military supplies to the armed forces of Ukraine.[5] Publicly announced commitments include:

  • 300 jamming and anti-jamming electronic systems
  • three Sea King helicopters
  • 1,500 surface-to-air missiles
  • over 1,600 strike and air defence missiles
  • an unspecified number of Storm shadow cruise missiles

The total value of UK equipment donated to Ukraine from UK stockpiles, between February 2022 and March 2024, was £171.5mn. The Ministry of Defence has estimated that replacing this donated equipment will cost £2.7bn. As figure 3 shows, the Ministry of Defence reduced the amount of equipment donated from UK stockpiles after 2022/23.

Figure 3. Value of UK military equipment donated to Ukraine

A bar chart showing the value of military equipment donated to Ukraine from UK stockpiles. The value of donations peaked in 2022/23, totalling £130mn, before falling to £16mn in 2023/24.
(National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into military support for Ukraine’, 11 September 2024)

Training

As well as providing funds and equipment, the UK has helped to train Ukrainian military personnel. UK involvement in Ukrainian military training started after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 with Operation Orbital, which provided non-lethal military training to 22,000 personnel between 2015 and February 2022.

According to the National Audit Office, during the period June 2022 to July 2024, the UK had:

  • delivered approximately 3,000 individual and specialist courses, including training in the use of UK-provided weapons, medical training, and chaplaincy courses on battlefield pastoral care
  • trained approximately 1,000 Ukrainian marines
  • provided elementary flying training to over 20 trainees for the Ukrainian Airforce

In its factsheet on UK support to Ukraine (updated 28 March 2025), the government stated that the UK has also provided basic infantry training to over 53,000 Ukrainian soldiers as part of ‘Operation Interflex’.[6]

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Cover image by Maksym Diachenko on Unsplash.

References

  1. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, ‘UK support to Ukraine: Factsheet’, updated 28 March 2025. Return to text
  2. National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into military support for Ukraine’, 11 September 2024. Return to text
  3. HM Treasury, ‘First £752mn tranche of loan sent to Ukraine for military equipment’, 7 March 2025. Return to text
  4. Kiel Institute for the World Economy, ‘Ukraine support tracker’, updated 14 February 2025. Return to text
  5. National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into military support for Ukraine’, 11 September 2024. Return to text
  6. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, ‘UK support to Ukraine: Factsheet’, updated 28 March 2025. Return to text