by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
During the Oval Office meeting last Friday with Vladimir Zelensky, President Donald Trump said: “We gave you through this stupid president [Biden] $350 billion.”
The day before, in Trump’s two press conferences with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on February 27, Trump repeated this number three times over: “And then if you look at the war, we’re in for $300 billion plus and they’re in for $100 billion, they get their money back and now we’ll get our money back also. But under Biden, you wouldn’t have done that.”
“We don’t get the money back. Biden made a deal. He put in $350 billion and I thought it was a very unfair situation…And we didn’t have that honour under the Biden administration. He sent money or just sent money after money after money and never had any knowledge of ever seeing it back, maybe $300 billion to $350 billion. But under the breakthrough agreement, very unusual, which everyone said was difficult to get, but it’s really very good for Ukraine and very good for us. The American taxpayers will now effectively be reimbursed for the money and hundreds of billions of dollars poured in to helping Ukraine defend itself, which by and of itself is a very worthy thing to do. We’ve paid far more than any other country and, with most of our support, it’s been paid in military, the finest weapons anywhere in the world.”
Three days earlier on February 24, Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron the same number: “The deal is being worked on where I think getting very close to getting an agreement where we get our money back over a period of time. But it also gives us something where I think it’s very beneficial to their economy, to them as a country. But we’re in for $350 billion…that’s a lot of money, a lot of lot of money invested and we had nothing, nothing to show for it and it was the Biden administration’s fault. The Europeans are in for about $100 billion and they do it in the form of a loan. And the Europeans have been great on this issue.”
This was Trump’s opener with Macron in the Oval Office. He then repeated the same numbers twice at their afternoon press conference: “The United States has put up far more aid for Ukraine than any other nation, hundreds of billions of dollars. We’ve spent more than $300 billion and Europe has spent about $100. $100 billion, that’s a big difference and at some point, we should equalize, but hopefully we won’t have to worry about that…I mean we’re in there for about $350 billion. I think that’s a pretty big contribution.”
Macron, Starmer and Zelensky knew Trump’s $350 billion number was the claim he was making because Trump had rehearsed and repeated it before. “The United States has given $350 billion,” Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), “because we had a stupid, incompetent president and administration, $350. But here’s worse, Europe gave it in the form of a loan, they get their money back…We give them billions of dollars and we gave them our military equipment, just tremendous numbers of billions of dollars’ worth of–billions and billions.”
Macron, Starmer and Zelensky didn’t dare to differ or correct Trump, let alone tell him he was mistaken or faking.
The US Government audit record, however, shows, not only that Trump’s 350 number is twice larger than the actual number appropriated by Congress between 2022 and the present: that number is $182.78 billion. But Trump’s claim to have “given”, “spent”, or “sent” 350 to the Ukraine is more than four times the number which has been actually disbursed: this number is just $83.43 billion.
Trump’s number conceals a repeated lie that Trump’s Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury, his Director of National Intelligence, his Budget Director, and his National Security Advisor all know to be a lie, as do Macron, Starmer and Zelensky. This is the number which the Special Inspector General (SIG) appointed by Congress to investigate, audit and document where the money has gone, has just reported.
In this new SIG report, published on February 11, 2025, it is revealed that of the actual appropriation of $182.784 billion, $44.85 billion (24.4%) has been programmed to pay for US ground forces, weapons, “procurement”, and “operation and maintenance”, in Europe, outside the Ukraine, “to support the full range of costs associated with the increased U.S. military presence in Europe, both to support Ukraine and to provide enhanced deterrence in Eastern Europe.”
This money — the small print reveals — includes spending by the US military commands on propaganda and public deception operations. The official rationale is reported for the Army: “USEUCOM works to counter Russian disinformation in Europe…[including] campaigns in Bulgaria, Georgia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina with the goal of disrupting Russia’s influence and improving allies’ and partners’ resilience to Russia’s malign activities…[and] to develop and manage online platforms that engage with the target audiences through docuseries, infotainment, social media commentary, and by leveraging third-party social media influencers.” Read more here.
In addition, the Inspector-General’s report reveals that $45.78 billion (25.1%) has been allocated for “replenishment of DoD stocks”. This means repurchasing from US military contractors the weapons they have already been paid to deliver to the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and other Pentagon forces.
Finally, another $33.21 billion (18.2%), tagged the “Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI)”, has been legislated for the programme, according to the SIG report, “through which State procures, and the DoD delivers weapons, materiel, services, and training requested by partners and allies.” This has been the scheme to pressure European and other US allies to send their existing Russian or Soviet-made arms inventories to Kiev, and replace them with US weapons, creating thereby “opportunities to transition some countries to U.S. rather than Russian military equipment.”
In other words, $123.84 billion, or more than two-thirds (68%) of the US aid programme for the Ukraine war, is planned to go to the US arms industry. The American word for this is a hustle. Lawyers call it extortion and fraud.
The full Inspector-General’s report runs to 130 pages, including methodology, footnoted sources, itemizations of US weapons, lists of audits and investigations, and one classified appendix. Read the 93-page text here.
For illustration, here are several key money tables and piecharts which give the lie to the Trump claims:Source: https://media.defense.gov/ -- p.25
Source: https://media.defense.gov/ – p.38
The Inspector-General’s report also reveals that the US has been providing a far smaller share of loans to the Ukraine than the Europeans and the UK.
Although termed loans, the US and the other lenders reserve the right to reduce or cancel repayments, and the Congress has already been doing this.
The text of the Report also reveals that there is no intention by the US, the European Union, the UK, or other US allies to require the Ukraine to make loan repayments. Instead, their scheme is for Russia to repay through the confiscation of Russian state assets ordered as part of the western economic war.
When Trump made his declaration last week in justification of the minerals agreement with the Ukraine — “we’re in for $300 billion plus and they’re in for $100 billion, they get their money back and now we’ll get our money back also. But under Biden, you wouldn’t have done that” – the President was lying. Instead, he and his allies are proposing grand larceny from Russia – the grandest larceny in the history of state and empire theft.
“Since February 2022,” the Inspector-General reported to Congress, “the international community has immobilized approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets held at U.S., European, Canadian, and Japanese financial institutions. Most of the immobilized assets are held in the European Union. This quarter [October-December 2024], the G7 nations initiated the extension of $50 billion in loans—called extraordinary revenue acceleration [ERA] loans—to Ukraine, to be repaid by future windfall proceeds of those assets. Subject to interest rate changes, the frozen assets will generate proceeds of roughly $2.6 to $3.2 billion a year. The loans will provide budget support for the Ukrainian government’s immediate financial needs, while the United Kingdom’s contribution of an estimated $2.8 billion is earmarked as budget support for military equipment. The United States provided $20 billion [40%] in loans as part of the initiative. Repayment of the loans will be through income earned from investments on immobilized Russian sovereign assets. The assets will not be seized; instead, the European Union will collect and disburse the investment profits that those assets generate to pay back G7 members’ loans.” – p.34
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is actively participating in this warfighting scheme of fraud, theft, and lying.
In the December 20, 2024, report of the IMF Executive Board and the Fund staff on the Ukraine’s financial condition, the Fund claimed “Adequate reserves have been sustained by continued sizeable external support… The [IMF loan] program remains fully financed with a cumulative external financing envelope of US$148 billion in the baseline and US$177 billion in the downside over the 4-year program period, including commitments from the G7’s Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration Loans for Ukraine (ERA) initiative. Full, timely and predictable external support—on terms consistent with debt sustainability—remains essential to maintaining full program financing and safeguarding stability.”
What the IMF means by ERA is stealing from the confiscation of Russian assets.
The IMF staff responsible for the Ukraine omitted to identify the risk that in an end-of-war settlement, the Russian terms would include the return of the confiscated assets and thus an end to that source of loan repayment.
“An earlier end to the war,” the Fund report claimed on December 20, 2024, “could entail a wide set of outcomes. A potential peace settlement could, on the one hand, result in an upside scenario conditional on the available international support and accelerated reforms, a stronger recovery and medium-term potential could result from a quicker return migration and private investment flows anchored by EU accession. On the other hand, despite an earlier end to the war, the security situation may not stabilize promptly thereafter, or the war’s ultimate damages could be even greater than currently understood. In this event, there are risks of adverse economic and social outcomes, including lower private investment, higher migration, and weaker reform momentum, entailing a slower or incomplete post-war recovery.”
SIXTH REVIEW UNDER THE EXTENDED ARRANGEMENT UNDER THE EXTENDED FUND FACILITY, REQUESTS FOR MODIFICATION OF A PERFORMANCE CRITERION, AND FINANCING ASSURANCES REVIEW – source: https://www.imf.org/en/ -- p.3.
In this box chart, the IMF reveals how it is planning for the stolen Russian funds to be used to repay each of the allied lenders to the Kiev regime, according to the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration Loans for Ukraine (ERA):
Source: page 27 of https://www.imf.org/en/
In the IMF staff report, the confidence that the Ukraine will have no debt to repay the US or the other state lenders comes from “assurances from the European Commission and the G7”: “The updated debt sustainability analyses reflect the current status of the ERA financing, and the program’s debt sustainability objectives remain the same. As the EU and other G7 members are still finalizing their ERA arrangements, staff has maintained the same conservative forecasting assumption from the Fifth Review and incorporated ERA financing in public debt. As expected, the loans will be serviced by distributions from the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism (ULCM) that collects proceeds from the extraordinary profits qualifying CSDs derive from immobilized Russian assets (Figure 6). Based on assurances from the European Commission and the G7, staff continues to judge that the risks of Ukraine having to assume any residual liability for servicing ERA financing are sufficiently mitigated so that this financing can be carved out from the assessment of the debt restructuring targets. Moreover, the US has formally cancelled half of the repayable economic assistance (US$4.65 billion) provided under the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act; the remainder continues to be treated as a contingent liability for the assessment of the debt restructuring targets. Moreover, the US has formally cancelled half of the repayable economic assistance (US$4.65 billion) provided under the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act; the remainder continues to be treated as a contingent liability for debt sustainability analysis purposes.”
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