People who complain about “how much the West spends on Ukraine” forget one fact: Ukraine has already paid the highest possible price for promises that were never fulfilled, writes digital creator Yuliya Azizova.
1. What Ukraine gave up under the Budapest Memorandum
Ukraine surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal:
1,900 strategic nuclear warheads
176 ICBMs
44 Tu-160 / Tu-95MS strategic bombers
Full launch, storage and command infrastructure
Current value: $2–4 trillion.
Yes — trillion.
Ukraine traded this arsenal for security guarantees from the US, UK, and russia.
Guarantees that collapsed in 2014 and burned in 2022.
2. How much the US has spent on UkraineIn 11 years of war:
Total US support: $80–90 billion
For comparison:
Ukraine gave up a nuclear arsenal worth 30–50 times more.
3. How US support has been restricted
For years Ukraine was denied:
ATACMS long-range missiles
F-16 jets
Enough Patriot systems
Permission to strike inside russia (granted only partially in 2024–25)
These delays cost thousands of Ukrainian lives and entire cities.
4. The real cost of war for Ukraine
In 11 years:
450,000+ killed and wounded
Over 50% of energy infrastructure destroyed
Trillion-dollar economic losses
Lost investments, factories, human capital
A development trajectory equal to Poland’s — shattered not only by russian missiles but also by Western hesitation
5. So who really owes whom?
Ukraine didn’t ask for charity.
Ukraine asked its guarantors to honor their own signatures.
While the US and UK pretended the memorandum “wasn’t binding,” russia prepared a full-scale invasion.
Ukraine is now defending:
NATO’s eastern flank
Europe’s energy routes
the Black Sea
the global security system America built after WWII
Ukraine presents the real bill:
for destroyed cities, for millions of affected lives, for lost decades of development —
and for guarantees that never existed in practice.
And that bill is not for Ukraine.
It’s for those who promised protection and failed to deliver it.
