It appears President Trump has been rolling his eyes along with the rest of us as we watch a seemingly endless parade of European Union (EU) leaders line up to kiss the ring of Volodymyr Zelensky. The spectacle took place this past weekend in London—the safe space Zelensky ran to after beclowning himself in the Oval Office—with the leaders making a big show of how much they support Ukraine.
The EU wanted the world to know that they are the real heroes here because they care so much about the human cost of war that they support the guy who seemingly wants to keep it going indefinitely. It was all for show, of course, and meant as a big middle finger to Donald Trump and the United States, who’ve had enough of bankrolling Europe’s war and would like to see an immediate end to it.
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Much of the world was laughing at the EU these past few days because we all know these countries love to take part in the photo ops and offer hollow words of support but are less enthusiastic when it comes to actually ponying up the money to back up their words. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which has a Ukraine Support Tracker, reported last month that many countries in the EU, including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, are spending far less of their gross domestic product (GDP) on aid to Ukraine that they had previously committed.
The sum of aid is comparatively low, however, when measured as a share of donor GDP. Germany, the UK, and the US, for example, have mobilized less than 0.2 percent of their GDP per year to support Ukraine, while other rich donor countries like France, Italy, or Spain only allocated about 0.1 percent of their annual GDP.
Then there’s this: As it turns out, the EU spends far more money buying gas from Russia than it does in aid to Ukraine. And President Trump was more than happy to bring attention to that little nugget.
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 3, 2025
Europe has spent more money buying Russian Oil and Gas than they have spent on defending Ukraine —BY FAR!
The report from the Kiel Institute had the numbers, as reported last week by The Guardian:
EU member states bought €21.9bn (£18.1bn) of Russian oil and gas in the third year of the war, according to estimates from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), despite the efforts under way to kick the continent’s addiction to the fuels that fund Vladimir Putin’s war chest.
The amount is one-sixth greater than the €18.7bn the EU allocated to Ukraine in financial aid in 2024, according to a tracker from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
One of the coauthors of the report, Vaibhav Raghunandan, concluded that the EU, for all intents and purposes, has been sending more aid to Russia during the war, in the form of fuel purchases, than it has to Ukraine.
“Purchasing Russian fossil fuels is, quite plainly, akin to sending financial aid to the Kremlin and enabling its invasion. [It’s] a practice that must stop immediately to secure not just Ukraine’s future, but also Europe’s energy security.”
President Trump has been right about the EU all along—they love to virtue signal on the world stage, but when it comes to actually putting real money where their mouth is, they fold like a cheap suit. It’s time for Europe to stop playing both sides and take responsibility for their own defense—because the United States of 2025 isn’t so keen on bailing them out anymore.
