The current claim
As the war in Ukraine escalates, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Australia to provide further assistance in the war effort.
On October 12, following an overnight meeting with Mr Zelenskyy, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese blitzed a series of breakfast TV programs repeating a familiar claim.
"Russia continues to engage in these aggressive acts. We'll continue to provide support. We are the largest non-NATO contributor," he told ABC News Breakfast.
Mr Albanese repeated similar comments that morning on the Sky News First and Sunrise programs.
But as a previous analysis by RMIT ABC Fact Check in August showed, Mr Albanese's claim doesn't stack up.
The previous claim
Speaking to Sky News on July 7 following a visit to Ukraine, Mr Albanese said Australia had been "the largest non-NATO contributor" to Ukraine.
At the time, experts told Fact Check comparisons of contributions to Ukraine were complicated by a lack of complete data, varied definitions of what constitutes a "contribution" and difficulties in making direct comparisons between countries.
The best available data is published by German government-funded research organisation the Kiel Institute. Its Ukraine Support Tracker breaks down single-country donations on the basis of humanitarian, financial and military aid, and also quantifies joint donations from members of the European Union made via multilateral funds.
When Mr Albanese made his July claim, the most recent data available (spanning from January 24 to July 1) showed that when the euro value of these types of aid was combined, Australia ranked sixth of the 14 non-NATO donors in the data set.
Measured as a proportion of GDP, Australia slipped to seventh.
Looking at individual metrics, Australia's ranking ranged from first (for the euro value of bilateral military aid) to equal last (for giving no financial aid).
But when calculated as a proportion of GDP, Sweden's bilateral military aid alone was more than twice the size of Australia's.
In addition, counting only bilateral military aid excludes multilateral contributions made by non-NATO members such as Sweden to Ukraine's military via the EU.
Even if only accounting for bilateral contributions, experts questioned the value of comparing military aid alone when a non-NATO donor such as Japan — which has constitutional constraints on military spending — gave almost three times as much as Australia but chiefly in the form of financial aid.
Updated data
Following the publication of Fact Check's analysis, the Kiel institute published updated data covering the period until August 3. This was the most recent readily available data at the time of Mr Albanese's claim on the morning of October 12.
These updated figures make no change to Australia's ranking as the 6th or 7th largest contributor to Ukraine amongst the non-NATO donors.
As Fact Check previously noted, Finland and Sweden were officially invited to join NATO on June 29. However, accession protocols have not yet been ratified and therefore neither nation was a NATO member at the time of the claim.
Fact Check contacted Mr Albanese's office in relation to his recent claim. No response was received.
Sweden's increased bilateral military contribution
Just hours before Mr Albanese made his comments on ABC News TV on October 12, the Kiel Institute released new data covering January 24 to October 3.
This update showed Australia's overall ranking on the basis of combined contributions to Ukraine amongst non-NATO nations remained the same at 6th on a nominal basis and 7th as a proportion of GDP.
However, whereas Australia previously ranked first on the basis of nominal bilateral military aid, the updated data shows the commitments of Sweden at 27 million euro had eclipsed Australia's 25 million euro contribution.
Principal researcher: Sonam Thomas
