Ukrainian officials have released no such information, and there is no evidence of such payments.

Published December 31, 2024

A viral image claims that 18 prominent U.S. politicians received kickback payments from the Ukrainian government. The information was supposedly released by “Ukrainian officials” and indicates that the politicians received anywhere from $17 million to $92 million in exchange for backing continued U.S. support for Ukraine.

The claim is false: The information in the post was not released by Ukrainian officials, and there is no evidence that U.S. politicians have received “kickback” payments from Ukraine.

The earliest version of the post identified by The Dispatch Fact Check first appeared on a Thai-language website on October 3, 2023. By early November 2023, the image began spreading more widely on popular social media sites including X. The original post links to a Russian video site featuring an episode of Redacted, an online news channel run by former Fox & Friends co-host Clayton Morris that regularly spreads anti-Ukraine conspiracy theories. While the video by Redacted does discuss U.S. financial support for Ukraine, it does not include the kickback payment information included in the image. A search of news articles from the period also shows no reports of payment information released by Ukrainian officials.

“It’s absolutely nonsensical,” Ian Garner, an assistant professor at the Pilecki Institute—a Polish governmental research institution—...

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