Washington
CNN
—
President Donald Trump is on a lying spree about Ukraine.
In remarks to reporters on Tuesday and in a social media post on Wednesday, Trump made numerous false claims about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Russian war on Ukraine – some of which echoed inaccurate talking points from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Here is a fact check of some of his assertions.
Who started the war
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump dismissed Ukraine’s complaints about its exclusion from US-Russia talks on ending the war – and falsely said of Ukraine: “You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.”
Ukraine did not start the war. Russia started the war by invading Ukraine in 2022. Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, and several Republican lawmakers have noted this obvious fact in the wake of Trump’s lie.
Zelensky’s approval rating
In the same Tuesday remarks, Trump called for a new Ukrainian election – last year’s previously scheduled presidential election was called off because the country is under martial law – and falsely claimed Zelensky is “down at 4% percent approval rating.”
That 4% figure is not even close to accurate.
The latest survey from a leading Ukrainian pollster, conducted earlier this month, found that 57% of Ukrainians said they trusted Zelensky. That was up from 52% in December – and 52% was Zelensky’s lowest wartime figure in this series of trust surveys, which measure something similar to the US concept of presidential approval.
US wartime aid to Ukraine
In the Wednesday social media post, Trump falsely claimed that Zelensky “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars” to “go into” an unwinnable war.
The $350 billion figure, too, is far from reality.
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks wartime aid to Ukraine, the US had committed a total of about $124 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine between late January 2022, just before the Russian invasion, and the end of December 2024; the think tank found the US had actually allocated about $119 billion.
It’s possible to arrive at different totals using different counting methodologies, but there is no apparent basis for Trump’s “$350 billion” figure. The US government inspector general overseeing the Ukraine response has said on its website that “as of September 30, 2024, the U.S. Ukraine response funding totals nearly $183 billion, with $130.1 billion obligated and $86.7 billion disbursed” – and that includes funding spent in the US or sent to countries other than Ukraine.
US aid vs. European aid
In both the Tuesday remarks and the Wednesday social media post, Trump returned to his familiar but false claim about a supposedly massive disparity between the amount of Ukraine aid provided by the US and by Europe.
He said Tuesday: “I think Europe has given $100 billion and we’ve given, let’s say, $300-plus (billion).” He wrote Wednesday: “The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe.”
Neither of those statements are accurate.
In fact, according to the Kiel Institute’s data, Europe – the European Union plus individual European countries – had collectively committed far more total wartime military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine through December (about $258 billion) than the US committed (about $124 billion). Europe had also allocated more military, financial and humanitarian aid (about $138 billion) than the US allocated (about $119 billion).
The US did have a slim lead in one particular category, military aid allocated, providing about $67 billion to about $65 billion for Europe. But even that was nowhere close to the giant gulf Trump described.
Zelensky and ‘missing’ aid money
In the Wednesday social media post, Trump falsely claimed that Zelensky “admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’” He made a similar claim to reporters on Tuesday.
But Zelensky has made no such admission. Rather, he has taken issue with inflated claims about how much US cash Ukraine has received.
He said in a February 1 interview with the Associated Press that although people talk about Ukraine getting as much as $200 billion in US aid, Ukraine had received about $76 billion, largely in the form of weapons. Zelensky said he doesn’t know where all the professed additional money has gone and that perhaps these higher figures are correct “on paper,” according to a translation by the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
Contrary to some viral social media posts this month, that wasn’t a confession that half of the cash that the US sent to Ukraine had vanished. In reality, Zelensky was saying exactly what experts in the US and elsewhere have repeatedly pointed out – that a large chunk of the total US budgetary “response” to the Ukraine war is not in the form of money handed to the Ukrainian government.
For example, experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank wrote last May: “The notion of ‘aid to Ukraine’ is a misnomer. Despite images of ‘pallets of cash’ being sent to Ukraine, about 72 percent of this money overall and 86 percent of the military aid will be spent in the United States. The reason for this high percentage is that weapons going to Ukraine are produced in U.S. factories, payments to U.S. service members are mostly spent in the United States, and even some piece of the humanitarian aid is spent in the United States.”
In new comments to reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reported, Zelensky said the US has provided about $67 billion in weapons and $31.5 billion in budget support.