>>(the total US aid now surpasses Russia’s entire military budget per year).
> That's completely meaningless. Russia's military budget pays for many times more personnel and weapons systems than the equivalent number as part of the US military budget, because the purchasing power of, say, $1 million is vastly different when it's spent by the Pentagon in the US, paying US prices and employing Americans, or by the Russian MOD, paying Russian prices and employing Russians.
It also seems misleading in the sense that, for example, we have a ton of Abrams tanks that the US military didn’t want, but that Congress has over time decided to buy. So if we send them to Ukraine, how should that be accounted for financially? I guess the cost of a gently used Abrams is pretty high but we already bought it and the value to us is pretty low.
> That's completely meaningless. Russia's military budget pays for many times more personnel and weapons systems than the equivalent number as part of the US military budget, because the purchasing power of, say, $1 million is vastly different when it's spent by the Pentagon in the US, paying US prices and employing Americans, or by the Russian MOD, paying Russian prices and employing Russians.
It also seems misleading in the sense that, for example, we have a ton of Abrams tanks that the US military didn’t want, but that Congress has over time decided to buy. So if we send them to Ukraine, how should that be accounted for financially? I guess the cost of a gently used Abrams is pretty high but we already bought it and the value to us is pretty low.