Kevin Lamarque/AP
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...
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