Fact-checking President Donald Trump’s attacks on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

President Donald Trump made a series of dubious claims about Ukraine and its leader as he seeks to negotiate an end to the country’s three-year war with Russia.

Trump’s relationship with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly soured as Trump called Zelenskyy a "dictator" and said he "started" the country’s war with Russia, a claim we rated Pants on Fire. Zelenskyy accused Trump of spreading Russian disinformation.

Trump, who sent a team to Saudi Arabia Feb. 18 to begin negotiations that did not include Ukraine on ending the war, described Zelenskyy as a "modestly successful comedian," who was only good at playing former 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. 

Claim: Zelenskyy started the war in Ukraine with Russia.

Pants on Fire. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long sought to blame Ukraine for the war he started when he launched an invasion February 24, 2022. Trump echoed that talking point to reporters Feb. 18 after Zelenskyy said Ukraine had not been invited to talks to end the war.

"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 start of the Russian invasion that has killed an estimated 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers and at least 12,000 Ukrainian civilians was well documented. 

News coverage, video footage and the United Nations noted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in real time. Putin announced it as a "special military operation" at 6 a.m. Moscow time Feb. 24, 2022.

"The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime," Putin said in a televised address. A transcript of his speech used the Russian spelling of Ukraine’s capital city. "To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation."

Putin’s false rationalizations 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 mischaracterization.

Zelenskyy was democratically elected in March 2019 to a five-year term with more than 73% of the vote. He would have been up for reelection in spring 2024. However, Ukraine imposed martial law after Russia’s invasion. Ukrainian law prohibits elections under martial law.

Trump called Zelenskyy "A Dictator without Elections" in a Feb. 19 Truth Social post. At Mar-a-Lago the day before, reporters asked Trump whether he supported Russia’s demand for Ukraine to hold new elections to reach a peace deal.

Trump said, in part, "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?’"

Millions of Ukrainian citizens have been displaced by the war and many others reside in Russian-occupied territory, so holding an election could disenfranchise many voters.

"To call Zelensky a dictator is like calling Winston Churchill a dictator because the UK postponed elections until after the end of World War Two," said Fathali Moghaddam, a Georgetown University psychology professor who researches democracy and dictatorships, in an email to PolitiFact. "Clearly, the term dictator does not apply to Zelensky, just as it does not apply to Churchill." 

A spokesperson for United Kingdom Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told BBC it was "perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War Two," and that Zelenskyy is Ukraine’s "democratically elected leader."

Putin won reelection to another six-year term in March 2024 in an election the U.S. National Security Council said was "obviously not free nor fair."

"Trump would be correct to use the term dictator to describe Putin, who has used fake elections to remain in power for a quarter of a century," Moghaddam said.

Claim: Zelenskyy has a 4% approval rating.

This is inaccurate. Trump made these comments at a Feb. 18 news conference, and it wasn’t clear what poll he was citing. We searched Google and the Nexis news database and found no reports of polls showing Zelenskyy with a 4% approval rating.

In a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll conducted Feb. 4-9, Zelenskyy had a trust rating of 57% among 1,000 Ukrainians surveyed. That’s down from 90% in May 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion, but up from 52% in December 2024.

Some social media users, including X owner Elon Musk, sought to discredit the polling by linking the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been at the center of distorted claims. The social media posts offered no evidence for their claim that the polling is not credible.

The Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda reported the country’s leading polling agencies have not published polls showing approval ratings during the war. One that has published approval ratings, the Sotsys Group, shows Zelenskyy with 16% 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 U.S. spent $350 billion to help Ukraine.

This is inaccurate. Trump’s figure nearly doubles the  amount that Congress has appropriated or made available since the war began. 

Ukraine Oversight, the website of the special inspector general for Operation Atlantic Resolve, which the U.S. government created in 2014 to coordinate its military aid to Ukraine, said that as of Sept. 30, 2024, the U.S. had spent $183 billion to help Ukraine.

Mark Cancian, a senior defense and security adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the amount the U.S. has spent varies depending on what is being counted as "aid to Ukraine," but most estimates are in the range of $175 billion to $185 billion.

"No matter what you add, however, the total doesn't get close to $350 billion," Cancian said.

Claim: Zelenskyy said he doesn't know where half of the money the U.S. has given Ukraine went. 

False. In a Feb. 2 interview with The Associated Press, Zelenskyy said his country’s military has received only a portion of the billions in U.S. aid earmarked for Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

Zelenskky cited a total of $177 billion or $200 billion spent by the U.S., and said Ukraine had not received about $100 billion of that total. The official amount spent by the U.S. on Ukraine is $183 billion.

However, Zelenskyy wasn’t saying that the rest of the money was missing. Direct military support to Ukraine totaled about $70 billion. Of $175 billion appropriated by Congress, much of it was spent in the U.S. on weapons manufacturers and U.S. military and government operations.

Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary, left, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speak Feb. 12, 2025, during a meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine.(AP)

Claim: Zelenskyy was "sleeping and unavailable" to meet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett during a Feb. 12 Kyiv visit.

Photos show this is inaccurate. Trump told reporters Feb. 19 aboard Air Force One that Bessett was treated "rather rudely" when he visited Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Feb. 12, because Ukraine rejected a rare earth mineral proposal. Trump also said Zelenskyy was "sleeping and unavailable" to meet Bessett.

Trump’s statement is contradicted by news photos and videos of Bessett and Zelenskyy meeting in Kyiv. Photos and a recap of the meeting are also on the Ukrainian president’s official website.

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Contributing Writer Caleb McCullough and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.