KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Donald Trump this week falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war that has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, causing outrage and alarm in a country that has spent nearly three years fighting back a much larger Russian military.

Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “ a dictator without elections” and claimed his support among voters was near rock-bottom.

Zelenskyy said Wednesday that the disinformation is coming from Russia, and some of what Trump has said does echo Russia’s own narrative of the conflict.

Here’s a look at some of Trump’s statements:

Ukraine ‘should have never started it’

WHAT TRUMP SAID: “You’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it ... You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

THE FACTS: Russia’s army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022, in an all-out invasion that Putin sought to justify by falsely saying it was needed to protect Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO.

But Russia’s aggression against Ukraine didn’t start then. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw signs that Ukraine was pulling away from Russia’s sphere of influence, seeking alliances with western European nations.

Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and started an armed aggression in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that grew into a long-running conflict that left thousands dead.

That conflict simmered until 2022, when...

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