United States President Donald Trump has made a series of claims about Ukraine and its leader as he seeks to end the country’s three-year war with Russia.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. The war of words has escalated after Zelenskyy accused Trump of repeating Russian misinformation.
Trump, who sent a team to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin negotiations on ending the war that did not include Ukraine, described Zelenskyy as a “modestly successful comedian” who was only good at playing former US President Joe Biden “like a fiddle”.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Here, we fact-checked six of Trump’s claims about Zelenskyy and Ukraine:
Claim: Zelenskyy started the war with Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long sought to blame Ukraine for the war he started when he launched an invasion on February 24, 2022. Trump echoed that talking point to reporters on Tuesday after Zelenskyy said Ukraine had not been invited to US-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia to end the war. Advertisement
“Today I heard [from Ukraine], ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years – you should have never started 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 …
