The West has had a terrific bargain in seeing the mighty forces of Russia beat themselves to a pulp on somebody else's anvil. Russia used to have vast numbers of tanks, guns, armoured vehicles, trucks, shells... all gone now.
Apart from a heap of old stock out of our warehouses, our cost has been trivial, compared to fighting a war or enduring an attack ourselves.
The war in Ukraine has
reduced European economic growth and "considerably" pushed up inflation across the continent, the Swiss National Bank said in a study published on [Oct. 13th], with worse effects still to come.
(Reuters)
Since the war began, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute. [Sept 2023]
The UK provided £2.3 billion in military support to Ukraine in 2022 and has already committed the same level of military support in 2023, totalling £4.6 billion over both years. [Feb 2023]
In September 2022, the World Bank
estimated that the cost of rebuilding Ukraine would be about $349 billion, a number that is larger than Ukraine's pre-invasion GDP and three-times greater than all the military, humanitarian, and financial assistance commitments to Ukraine since the start of the war, and is certainly much higher now.
source:rand.org
The Russian government has said it aims to spend a staggering Rbs10.8tn ($108bn) on defence next year, three times the amount allocated in 2021, the last year before the invasion, and 70 per cent more than was planned for this year.
The 'price of freedom' is mucho expensive, no?