Mapping the arc of US support to Ukraine
This article is authored by Vivek Mishra, ORF.
The United States (US) has provided financial and military support to Ukraine since 2014, when Russia took control of Crimea, and more firmly since February 2022, when the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war began. Indeed, US military, political, and strategic support to Ukraine is crucial to Kyiv as the conflict continues. For the Biden administration, aid to Ukraine is a vital principle on which his party politics hinges; it is a critical pathway to rebuild transatlantic solidarity; and is now increasingly becoming an election issue in the run-up to the November 2024 presidential polls. However, other geopolitical developments, including the Gaza conflict and escalatory competition with China in the Indo-Pacific, coupled with increased Republican weariness over the US’s involvement in wars and the potential of Donald Trump winning the upcoming presidential polls, are altering the trajectory of US support to Ukraine. This brief assesses the economic, political, and strategic considerations driving the US’s support of Ukraine.
The US’s relationship with Ukraine has evolved since the end of the Cold War when the latter became an independent country. A crucial development came in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Despite Russia's actions in Crimea and the Donbas conflict, the US’s response under President Barack Obama was modest at best, limited to economic sanctions and with no lethal military aid to Ukraine. Subsequently, Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, adopted a transactional approach to the relationship with Ukraine, ‘arm-twisting’ it to serve his interests. For instance, lethal aid to Ukraine was made contingent on how forthcoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was on information related to Trump’s political rival Joe Biden (currently the US president) and how willing he was to launch an investigation in this regard. However, the US’s relationship with Ukraine has transformed under the Biden administration. In the lead-up to the Russian military incursion in eastern Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration took two critical steps. First, it advanced relations with Ukraine through a joint statement on the ‘US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership’ released on September 1, 2021 to mark three decades of bilateral ties. Second, on November 10, 2021, the two countries signed the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, which emphasised “support for each other’s sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and inviolability of borders constitutes the foundation of our bilateral relations”.
The report can be accessed by clicking here.
This article is authored by Vivek Mishra, ORF.
