The claims of US President Trump on Zelenskyy and Ukraine check | Conflict news

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, made a number of claims about Ukraine and its leader when he tried to end the country’s three -year war with Russia.

Trump’s relationship with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly, when Trump called Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and said that he had “started” the war with Russia, an assertion that Politifact-Pants-on-Fire false spoke out with the evaluation fire. The war war has escalated after Zelenskyy Trump accused of repeating Russian misinformation.

Trump, who sent a team to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin negotiations on the end of the war, which did not include Ukraine, described Zelenskyy as a “modest successful comedian” who was only good at the former US President Joe Biden to play “like a violin”.

The White House did not respond to a request for comments. Here we checked six of Trump’s claims about Zelenskyy and Ukraine:

Assertion: Zelenskyy started war with Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long tried to accuse Ukraine for the war he began when he started an invasion on February 24, 2022 to end the war.

“Today I heard (from Ukraine):” Well, we were not invited. “Well, you have been there for three years. You should have ended it for three years – you should never have started.

The murder of an estimated 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers and at least 12,000 Ukrainian civilians in the conflict is well documented.

News reporting, video material and the United Nations documented the Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in real time. Putin announced it on February 24, 2022 at 6 a.m. in Moscow (3:00 a.m. GMT).

“The purpose of this operation is to protect people who have been confronted with humiliation and genocide for eight years that have been committed by the Kiev regime,” said Putin in a television address. A copy of his speech used the Russian spelling of the capital of Ukraine. “For this purpose, we will try to demonstrate Ukraine and denounce those who have committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians, also against the citizens of the Russian Federation.”

Putin’s false rationalizations for the war were referred to in 2022 as the political lies of the year.

Claim: Zelenskyy is a dictator

A professor who examines democracy and dictatorships said that this was a false characterization.

Zelenskyy was elected to a five -year term in March 2019 with more than 73 percent of the votes. He would have been re -election in March or April last year. However, Ukraine imposed war law after the invasion of Russia. Ukrainian law prohibits the elections according to war law.

Trump called Zelenskyy “a dictator without elections” in a social post of truth on Wednesday. In his estate Mar-A-Lago in Florida the day before, reporter Trump asked whether he supported Russia’s demand to Ukraine to hold new elections in order to achieve a peace agreement.

Trump said: “Yes, I would say that if you want a place at the table, you could say that people have to – people in Ukraine don’t have to say how: ‘It has been a choice for a long time ? ‘”

Millions of Ukrainian citizens were driven out by the war or have fled the country, and many others live in the Russian -occupied area, so that the elections could be held, many voters.

“Zelensky is to be called a dictator as Winston Churchill as a dictator because the British elections have postponed until after the end of the Second World War,” said Fathali Moghaddam, psychology professor at Georgetown University, who researched democracy and dictator, in an e -mail to politifact. “Of course, the term dictator does not apply to Zelenskyy, just as it does not apply to Churchill.”

A spokesman for the United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Strandmer told the BBC that it was “completely reasonable to expose the elections during the war and Great Britain in World War II”, and Zelenskyy is the “democratically elected leader of Ukraine”.

Putin won the re -election to another six -year term in March in an election that was “obviously not free or fair” for the US National Security Council.

“Trump would be right to use the term dictator to describe Putin who used fake elections to stay in power for a quarter of a century,” said Moghaddam.

Assertion: Zelenskyy has an approval of 4 percent

This is inaccurate. Trump made these comments at a press conference on Tuesday and it was not clear which survey he quoted. A search for Google and the Nexis News database showed no reports on surveys that Zelenskyy show with an approval assessment of 4 percent.

In a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from February 4th to 9th, Zelenskyy had a trust rating of 57 percent with 1,000 Ukrainians surveyed. That declined from 90 percent in May 2022 shortly after the invasion of Russia, but of 52 percent in December 2024.

Some social media users, including the X owner Elon Musk, tried to discredit the survey by combining the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology with the US Agency for International Development, which was at the center of distorted claims. The social media posts did not provide any evidence of their claim that the survey is not credible.

The Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda reported that the country’s leading electoral care agencies had not published any surveys that showed admission reviews during the war. One who published the approval ratings, the SotSys group, shows Zelenskyy with a approval of 16 percent. This survey, according to Ukrainska Pravda, was connected to the former chief strategist of the Ukrainian fifth President Petro Poroshenko, which Zelenskyy defeated in 2019.

Asserment: The United States has spent $ 350 billion to help Ukraine

This is inaccurate. Trump’s number almost doubles the amount that the congress has acquired or made available since the beginning of the war.

The Ukraine supervision -The General Inspector’s website for Operation Atlantic Resolve, which the US government created in 2014 to coordinate its military aid to Ukraine, said that the United States from September 30th Mrd. that had issued Ukraine.

Mark Cancian, a high-ranking defense and security advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the amount that the United States issued BN.

“No matter what you add, the total amount does not reach almost $ 350 billion,” said Cancian.

Trump’s figures regarding Ukraine’s help contradict the US government’s data itself. Independent research institutes also said that the help sent by the United States in Ukraine was lower than USD $ 350. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the United States sent around $ 120 billion from December.

A claim: Zelenskyy said he did not know where half the money that the United States gave

In an interview with The Associated Press on February 2, Zelenskyy said that the Ukrainian military had only received part of the billions in the United States for the defense of Ukraine against Russia.

Zelenskyy quoted a total of $ 177 billion or $ 200 billion, which were issued by the USA, and said that Ukraine did not receive about $ 100 billion from this total. The official amount that the United States spent on Ukraine is $ 183 billion.

Zelenskyy didn’t say the rest of the money was missing. The direct military support of Ukraine was around $ 70 billion. Of the USD 175 billion, which were acquired by the congress, a large part of it was spent in the USA for arms manufacturers and US military and government operations.

Claim: Zelenskyy was “sleeping and not available” to meet finance minister Scott Bessent in Kyiv last week in Kyiv

Photos show that this is imprecise. Trump told reporters on Wednesday on board Air Force One that Bessent was treated “fairly rude” when he visited Kyiv on February 12, because Ukraine had rejected a proposal for the Trump administration that the US -to make earth. Trump also said Zelenskyy was “slept and not available” to meet better.

Trump’s statement is refuted by news photos and videos by Bessent and Zelenskyy Meeting in Kyiv. Photos and a summary of the meeting can also be found on the website of the Ukrainian president.

On Thursday, Michael Waltz, National Security Adviser, Zelenskyy, asked to return to the mineral contract with the United States for negotiations. Zelenskyy has publicly rejected the demand from the US -Selenen. The Ukrainian leader asked for security guarantees as part of a peace agreement.