Aid to Ukraine or Netflix premium: for which allied taxpayers pay more

Netflix subscriptions turned out to be more expensive than aid to Ukraine/Thibault Penin

In the light of the ongoing debate about helping Ukraine in the fight against Russian aggression, information about the actual costs of Western countries becomes an important argument.

A recent study by the publication “Slovo i Dilo” reveals the real cost of support and its comparison with the everyday expenses of citizens. For comparison, we took the cost of a premium subscription to the streaming service Netflix.

Do allies already pay that much

Based on data from the Ukraine Support Tracker and the OECD, we compared the amount of aid provided by the countries of the world to Ukraine over two years with the average number of employed persons in these countries. The results showed that the cost of aid per citizen of Western countries was comparable to a monthly subscription to the Netflix streaming service.

Among the donor countries, the United States leads the way, providing 67.7 billion euros of aid to Ukraine, which is about 17.7 euros per month per American citizen. Compared to this, the monthly cost of a premium subscription to Netflix in the US is 20.5 euros.

The second largest aid comes from Germany, which provided Ukraine with 22.06 billion euros, which estimated at an average of 21.5 euros per month per German citizen. The cost of a premium subscription to Netflix in Germany is 17.9 euros per month.

The list also includes Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada, Poland and Sweden, where the level of aid to Ukraine was compared with the monthly cost of Netflix.

The study found that the cost of aid to Ukraine for citizens of Western countries is in most cases significantly lower than the monthly cost of entertainment. This gives an opportunity to rethink the discussions about the real costs of aid and its impact on citizens' pockets.