US President Donald Trump has hurled insults and personal attacks at the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and has since doubled down in a post on X, heading for 100 million views at the time this article was published.

Trump called Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections" who had lost the support of the Ukrainian people, telling him he "better move fast" to negotiate an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or he might not have a country left, among other things.

On Thursday, the US requested a joint press conference be canceled after talks between Zelenskyy and Trump's Ukraine envoy in Kyiv.

DW's Fact Check team takes an in-depth look at Trump's claims.

Is Zelenskyy a dictator who is refusing to hold elections?

Claim: Trump said Zelenskyy was a "dictator without elections."

DW Fact check: False.

Zelenskyy was elected to a five-year term in April 2019, winning 74.96% of the vote in a second-round run-off with incumbent Petro Poroshenko.

According to the Ukrainian constitution, the next presidential election ought to have taken place on the final Sunday of March 2024, but it was postponed due to the imposition of martial law.

Article 19 of the Ukrainian law "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law" explicitly prohibits the holding of national and local elections during a state of war. The parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for October 2023, were also postponed under a corresponding constitutional law.

The current situation shows why democratic elections in a...

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