Madrid, Feb 23 (EFE).- Spanish aid to Ukraine in the last year, including bilateral and multilateral military, humanitarian and economic aid, has accounted for 0.4 percent of Spanish GDP, detailed the director of Real Elcano Institute, Charles Powell.
“In perspective, and compared to previous wars, this is a cheap war”, Powell assured in a debate that, under the title “The war in Ukraine: one year later”, has analyzed the crisis and its international consequences.
The figure of 0.4 percent of GDP is “clearly lower” than that corresponding to the effort of the Baltic countries, but it is similar to that of countries like Italy or France, he pointed out, citing calculations made by the institute itself.
The Spanish contribution includes military aid, not only the shipment of material, but also the training of Ukrainian soldiers, while the humanitarian one includes the aid sent to Ukraine and the cost of hosting some 170,000 Ukrainians, of whom 40,000 are school children. in Spain.
By way of context for his claim that it is a cheap war, Powell has pointed out that the United States spent 1 percent of its GDP in a single year on the first Iraq war, compared with 0.4 percent it has spent in this year to support Ukraine.
Elcano experts have coincided in stressing that this war “is going to be long”, especially because “the Ukrainians are going to fight to the death”, Powell pointed out.
Also the former Spanish ambassador to Ukraine until the outbreak of the war, Silvia Cortés, who was following the debate among the public, has pointed out that “the Ukrainians are not going to surrender, because for them it is an existential war; if they lose, Ukraine disappears”.
Thus, he has considered that “even if President Zelensky wanted to cede Crimea and the Donbas, the Ukrainians are not going to accept it; They know that if the entire territory is not recovered, the war will continue forever.
Cortés, who spent almost 5 years in charge of the Spanish embassy in Kiev and organized the evacuation of Spaniards after the outbreak of the war, has pointed out that, in this conflict, “Russia is behaving with the same brutality as (Josef) Stalin in World War II.
The researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, Luis Simón, has also highlighted that Russia has proven to be “more aggressive than some thought, but less effective than others feared”.
For her part, the researcher Mila Milosevich has pointed out that the Russian invasion has caused “just the opposite of what it intended” since it has meant the expansion of NATO to Sweden and Finland and has brought Ukraine closer to the European Union.
As Powell has put it, thanks to the war, “NATO has gone from brain death to a clear renaissance.”