As he attempts to end Russia’s three-year conflict, US President Donald Trump has made a number of claims about Ukraine and its leader.
Trump’s relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy soured publicly as Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and said he “started” the war with Russia, a claim PolitiFact rated pants-on-fire false. Zelenskyy’s accusation that Trump has repeated Russian misinformation has heightened the word war.
Trump described Zelenskyy as a “modestly successful comedian” who was only good at playing former US President Joe Biden “like a fiddle,” as he sent a team to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin negotiations on a cease-fire that did not include Ukraine.
A comment request was not received by the White House. Here, we fact-checked six of Trump’s claims about Zelenskyy and Ukraine:
Claim: Zelenskyy started the war with Russia
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has long fought to blame Ukraine for the conflict he started when he launched an invasion on February 24, 2022. After Zelenskyy claimed Ukraine wasn’t invited to US-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Trump reiterated that point to reporters.
“Today I heard]from Ukraine], ‘ Oh well, we weren’t invited. ‘ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You ought to have waited three years before beginning it. You could have made a deal”, Trump said.
The killing of an estimated 46, 000 Ukrainian soldiers and at least 12, 000 Ukrainian civilians in the conflict is well documented.
News coverage, video footage and the United Nations documented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in real time. Putin announced it as a “special military operation” at 6am in Moscow (03: 00 GMT) on February 24, 2022.
In a televised address, Putin stated that the goal of this operation is to protect those who have been facing the Kiev regime’s ongoing genocide for eight years. A transcript of his speech used the Russian spelling of Ukraine’s capital. We will work to demilitarise and denounce Ukraine in order to bring charges against those responsible for numerous bloody crimes committed against people, including Russian Federation citizens.
Putin’s false rationalisations for the war were named PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year in 2022.
Claim: Zelenskyy is a dictator
A professor who researches democracy and dictatorships said this is a mischaracterisation.
Zelenskyy received more than 73% of the vote in March 2019 for a five-year term. He would have run for re-election in March or April of that year. However, Ukraine imposed martial law after Russia’s invasion. Elections are prohibited by Ukrainian law by martial law.
Trump called Zelenskyy “A Dictator without Elections” in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. Trump was questioned the day before at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida whether he had backed Russia’s request that Ukraine hold new elections in order to reach a peace deal.
Trump said: “Yeah, I would say that, you know, when they want a seat at the table, you could say, the people have to – wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, ‘ It’s been a long time since we’ve had an election? ‘”
Many Ukrainian citizens reside in Russian-occupied territory, and many of their votes have been displaced by the conflict. Elections could cause many voters to lose out.
According to Fathali Moghaddam, a psychology professor at Georgetown University who studies democracy and dictatorships, “to call Zelensky a dictator is like calling Winston Churchill a dictator because the UK postponed elections until after World War Two.” “Clearly, the term dictator does not apply to Zelenskyy, just as it does not apply to Churchill”.
Zelenskyy is Ukraine’s “democratically elected leader,” according to a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer who told the BBC that it was “perfectly reasonable” to suspend elections while at war, as the UK did during World War II.
In a March election that the US National Security Council criticized as “obviously not free nor fair,” Putin won re-election to a six-year term.
Trump would be correct to refer to Putin as a “dictator,” Moghaddam said, “who has used fake elections to hold onto power for a quarter of a century.”
Claim: Zelenskyy has a 4 percent approval rating
This is inaccurate. Trump made these comments at a news conference on Tuesday, and it wasn’t clear what poll he was citing. No polls that showed Zelenskyy with a 4 percent approval rating were reported after conducting searches on Google and the Nexis news database.
Zelenskyy received a 57% trust rating among the 1, 000 Ukrainians surveyed in a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology between February 4 and 9. That’s down from 90 percent in May 2022 shortly after Russia’s invasion but up from 52 percent in December 2024.
Elon Musk, a former X owner, attempted to discredit the polling by linking the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology to the US Agency for International Development, which has been the subject of fabricated assertions. No proof was provided by the social media posts to support their claim that the polling was untrue.
According to the Ukrainian news website Ukrainska Pravda, the top polling companies in the country haven’t released polls that show how much people voted for the war. One that has published approval ratings, the Sotsys Group, shows Zelenskyy with 16 percent approval. That poll, Ukrainska Pravda said, is tied to the former chief political strategist of Ukraine’s fifth president, Petro Poroshenko, who Zelenskyy beat in 2019.
Claim: The US has spent $350bn to help Ukraine
This is inaccurate. Trump’s figure nearly doubles the amount that Congress has authorized or provided since the start of the conflict.
According to the special inspector general for Operation Atlantic Resolve, which the US government established in 2014 to coordinate its military support to Ukraine, the US had already spent $ 183 billion as of September 30.
According to Mark Cancian, a senior defense and security advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the amount spent by the US varies depending on how much money is being allocated to “aid to Ukraine,” but most estimates range between $175 billion and $185 billion.
“No matter what you add, however, the total doesn’t get close to $350bn”, Cancian said.
Trump’s claims about aid to Ukraine conflict with information from the US government itself. Additionally, independent research institutes claimed that the US provided less than $350 billion in aid to Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the US sent about $120bn as of December.
Claim: Zelenskyy claimed he is unsure where the majority of the money given to Ukraine by the US went.
Zelenskyy claimed that only a small portion of the billions of US funding is being provided to Ukraine’s military for its defense against Russia in an interview with The Associated Press on February 2.
Zelenskyy cited a total of $ 177 billion, or $ 200 billion, in spending by the US, and claimed that Ukraine had not received $ 100 billion of that sum. The US has authorized $ 183 billion in spending on Ukraine.
Zelenskyy wasn’t saying that the rest of the money was missing. About $70 billion in direct military assistance was provided to Ukraine. The majority of the $175 billion that Congress authorized went to US military and government operations.
Claim: Zelenskyy and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met last week in Kyiv while Zelenskyy was “sleeping and unavailable.”
Photos show this is inaccurate. Trump claimed to be treated “rather rudely” when he traveled to Kyiv on February 12 because Ukraine refused to give the US a share of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, according to Trump’s statement on Wednesday on board Air Force One. Trump also said Zelenskyy was “sleeping and unavailable” to meet Bessent.
Photos and videos of Bessent and Zelenskyy’s meeting in Kyiv conflict with Trump’s statement. Photos and a recap of the meeting are also on the Ukrainian president’s website.
Source: Aljazeera
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