Without a doubt, Ukraine, during the war, still needs and – after its end – will need international assistance. Therefore, the paper aims to consider the securitisation of aid as an impulse to enhance selected CEE countries’ future aid to Ukraine. Notably, I do not use the term “securitisation” strictly, as presented originally by representatives of the Copenhagen School. Aid is not “the issue presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure” (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 23-24). It is not perceived as a threat in itself but as a tool for securitising problems that have been included in the development agenda. In other words, aid implements the donors’ interests related to security. Securitisation understood in this way may manifest itself, for example, through political declarations related to the reasons for undertaking aid activities, justification of aid activities in strategic documents, directing ODA to specific beneficiaries and the method of shaping priorities to be achieved through ODA. This approach was also presented by S. Brown and J. Grävingholt (2016, p. 3).
Consequently, taking into account ODA delivered to Ukraine by selected CEE countries from 2005 to 2021, the current state of aid (2022-2023) and perspectives on supporting Ukraine in the future, it is crucial to answer the following questions:
1) Did the four donors consider assisting Ukraine before 2022 as an effort to strengthen their security?
2) Is the aid delivered to Ukraine by the four donors securitised since 2022?
3) Has there been securitisation of aid to states during/after conflicts conducted by the four donors in the past (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria), and if so, has it generated increased financing?
4) How should CEE countries’ aid to Ukraine be managed in the future?
5) Can the LRRD (Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development) concept be a valuable framework for programming aid for Ukraine?
The research is conducted as a part of the project “The Securitization of Development Cooperation. The Case of Selected Central and Eastern European Countries” financed by the National Science Centre (Poland) under the agreement 2021/41/HS5/01281.