FACT CHECK: How Much of What Trump Said Last Week About War in Ukraine is True?

US President-elect Donald J. Trump, during a press conference at his Florida mansion Mar-A-Lago on Jan. 7, made declarations about the war in Ukraine and his incoming administration’s plans to end it quickly among other subjects.

The New York real estate tycoon got a few things right but, most of it was way off. Kyiv Post analyzed Trump’s statements and found that a little of what he said about Russia, Ukraine, and security on the NATO eastern frontier was roughly accurate, but a lot wasn’t, and even more was misleading.

For brevity’s sake, we will ignore most of Trump’s iffy claims beyond the Ukraine war. It is worth mentioning however, that he asserted “there were no wars when I was President,” later taking credit for US forces’ defeat of ISIS in Syria, and makes no mention of Russia’s first 2014 invasion of Ukraine. The complete FOX broadcast of the interview can be seen here.

Here is a run-down of Trump’s statements on Russia, Ukraine, and NATO over the last week – along with an analysis of what’s real and what’s not.

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Biden’s weak foreign policy

Trump said the weak foreign policy of the Biden administration was a main cause of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Had he been President instead of Biden in 2022, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine.

This is, at the very least, highly misleading.

Trump served as President from 2017-2021 and was the man responsible for US government deterrent policy towards Russia during that time. US support to Ukraine during Trump’s first term in office was limited to small numbers of anti-tank guided weapons and small-scale training with elements of Ukraine’s military.

Although the Trump administration did not preside over the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia during its first term, it certainly failed to turn back the Russian occupation of Crimea, or end the occupation of parts of Ukraine’s Donbas region. Most Ukrainian analysts say that a Kremlin calculation that Ukraine lacked the weapons and training to defend against a major invasion, is one of the main reasons Russian leader Vladimir Putin decided to attempt regime change in Ukraine in 2022.

To the extent that the US might have improved Ukrainian defense capacity, or taken other steps to prevent Russian military aggression including the imposition of stronger sanctions, Trump and his 2017-2021 administration stand accused of being directly responsible for the failure of deterring Russia’s invasion the following year.

Most of Ukraine’s main communities have been destroyed

Trump asserted that Ukraine’s cities, towns and villages are mostly destroyed by the war – “Their cities are largely knocked-down.”

This is false.

In fact, a string of towns and cities along the 1,000-kilometer (625-mile) front line have been damaged to varying degrees and those locations that have seen major fighting such as Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Adviivka, Vovchansk and Bakhmut have been severely damaged, and in some cases virtually leveled.

However, Ukraine’s territory is massive, roughly the size of France and Germany combined, and relative to the entire country, war damage has affected only a small fraction of homes and businesses. By and large, dilapidated Ukrainian buildings and infrastructure are the result of decades of poor maintenance.

Russia’s objection to Ukraine joining NATO was ‘understandable’

Russia invaded Ukraine because of its understandable concerns about NATO expansion because it was provoked by a tightening relationship between Ukraine and NATO, against a longstanding ban by Russia on that happening, that pre-dated Putin’s rise to power:

“That’s been like written in stone… somewhere along the line, Biden said they (Ukraine) should be able to join NATO...Russia has someone (from NATO) right on their doorstep and I could understand their feeling about that,” according to Trump

This is false.

Firstly, the Biden administration throughout its time in office actively resisted fast-tracking Ukrainian membership of NATO because of concerns about provoking Russia. Most analysts say Germany and France likewise opposed bringing Ukraine into NATO. Poland and the Baltic states have repeatedly complained that it was that stance that encouraged Russian aggression.

Secondly, in accordance with NATO’s charter, no third-party state may determine whether or not a country might become a member of the Alliance – it is the sole decision of member states. Neither Russia nor any other country outside the alliance has a veto over which countries can seek to join NATO. Trump’s assertion that Kremlin foreign policy priorities inherently outweigh NATO founding statutes directly contradicts the NATO charter, of which the US is a founding signatory.

In addition, Norway, Poland, Finland, and Lithuania all have become full-fledged NATO members bordering on Russia, and Putin has not invaded any of them, nor called their membership a significant threat to his country’s national security.

With these comments Trump seemed merely to echo longstanding Kremlin talking points that Ukraine is not a real country and so without the rights of a sovereign state, and that NATO is an “aggressive” alliance aiming to destroy Russia.

Europeans are using the war to take advantage of the US

Trump accused Europe of taking advantage of the US when it comes to Ukraine and security on the NATO eastern border – “I said it to President Zelensky. Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we’re in for. Now, whether you like that situation or not, Europe is much more affected than the United States. We have a thing called the ocean in between us. Right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?”

This is false. While the US is a key supporter of Ukraine, collectively Kyiv’s other allies contributions outweigh Washington’s. In terms of total money spent to date, Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine has cost US taxpayers around $150 billion and European taxpayers something like $288 billion.

The Kiel Institute, the gold standard research group following international assistance to Ukraine, in its October 2024 review of outside support to Ukraine, found that US military support both promised and delivered to Ukraine from January 2022 to October 2024 was valued just shy of $60 billion. Over the same period, non-US military assistance to Ukraine was a shade less, about $59 billion.

In terms of financial assistance, the US has sent Ukraine about $90 billion and promised an additional $30 billion. Europe alone has sent about $128 billion and promised an additional $120 billion.

If the comparison in respect of money paid to support Ukrainian war refugees is taken into account, then the US has spent nothing and European states more than $100 billion, the Kiel Institute research found.

It is difficult to prove one way or another whether Russia represents a greater geo-political threat to the US or Europe, but geographically, the US shares a sea border directly with Russia and strategically, the mass of Russia’s nuclear forces are deployed to attack the American mainland by way of the Arctic.

Ukraine’s topography is the cause of high casualty rates

Ukraine’s flat terrain is responsible for the very high casualties in the Russo-Ukraine War.

Trump said: “Every day many, many young people are being killed, soldiers. You know, the land is very flat. And the many hundreds of soldiers from each side are dead. And they’re lying in fields. All over the place. Nobody even collects [Them]. There are land mines all over – it’s a disaster. But it’s very flat. It’s farmland. And it’s very, very flat. And the only thing that stops a bullet, is the human body. And the human bodies are stopping a lot of bullets.”

This is false. In fact, drones and indirect fire weapons such as mortars, rockets and artillery account for about four out of five injuries suffered by soldiers on both sides in almost all fighting, and in static combat gunshot wounds are negligible.

In the very heavy majority of cases, a man or woman is hit while in some kind of cover like a trench or building ruins, and a drone or shell launched from kilometers away impacts nearby and explodes.

Cases where men advancing across open fields are hit are extremely rare and even in those instances – most recently by poorly-trained North Korean troops against entrenched Ukrainians – the attackers were cut down by explosions, fragments and splinters, and not by bullets.

Also, the lion’s share of the terrain where fighting has taken place has been in rolling hills. Only on the war’s southern front, particularly in the Kherson region, is the ground mostly flat.

As for the statement that young people being killed on the battlefield, statistics show that the average age of Ukrainian military casualties is 43 while that of their Russian counterparts is 38, according to figures produced by the US Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.