A White House meeting on Friday between US President Donald J. Trump and senior members of his government, and President Volodymyr Zelensky, broke down into an angry shouting contest, with Trump and US Vice President JD Vance hurling accusations at Zelensky and Ukraine.
Kyiv Post has fact-checked Trump’s, Vance’s and Zelensky’s statements.
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The checks used a Forbes Breaking News recording of the press conference published to YouTube. Comment timings below are from that content.
11:55 – Trump states Ukraine’s partners gave Ukraine “much less” support than the US.
This is false. In fact, Ukraine’s non-American allies have delivered about 60 percent of all aid sent Ukraine, while the US has sent about 40 percent. Trump has been repeatedly fact-checked in public on this point, most recently on Feb. 25 when French President Emmanuel Macron told Trump, before media, that his claim the US supported Ukraine more than other allies wasn’t true.
14:57 – Zelensky states he is “sure” US military support to Ukraine will continue and that President Trump is an ally of Ukraine.
This is likely false because, at a minimum, Trump called Zelensky a “dictator” and “a moderately successful comedian” among other insults during public statements on Feb. 18.
20:20 – Trump, responding to a reporter’s question about possible US intent to give Ukraine security guarantees against a possible repeat Russian attack, states: “I want to get the deal done. Security is so easy, that’s about two percent of the problem… The security is the easy part. It’s very nice. Everyone stops shooting.”
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This is false. Security guarantees for Ukraine are arguably the biggest hurdle for both a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Trump’s statement asserts the opposite of geopolitical reality.
Russian officials have called security guarantees to Ukraine by third-party states, particularly with troop contingents in Ukraine, as an absolute deal-breaker. Trump and other members of his administration have stated repeatedly that the US will not give security guarantees to Ukraine. The leaders of France, the UK and Italy, among others, have stated security guarantees to Ukraine are only possible with US participation. Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have stated they would agree to a ceasefire only if Ukraine had iron-clad security guarantees against a repeat Russian attack.
23:30 – Zelensky, responding to a question about a possible ceasefire, says that a ceasefire will never work because the Kremlin cannot be trusted.
“A ceasefire will never work. I’m the President. I have this experience. And not only me. Ukraine before my presidency. From 2014, Putin [has] broken [ceasefire agreements] 25 times; 25 times he broken [sic]; his own signature; 25 times he broke [this].”
This is possibly true but there is a qualification. In December 2019, Ukraine and Russia agreed to a “full and comprehensive” ceasefire along the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian troops in Ukraine’s Donbas region. From that time until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, fire was exchanged repeatedly, at times on a daily basis, at multiple locations. It is not possible to determine which side engaged first, or where, during the 25 months following the signing.
However, since all the shooting took place between Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine, and Russian forces invading Ukraine, from a rule of law standpoint all shooting was the responsibility of the invader – Russia.
28:45 – Trump says that NATO has committed insufficient resources to collective defense and that US commitment to NATO is much larger.
“NATO has to step up. And the Europeans have to step up more than they have. And I want to see them equalize. Because they are in for far less than we are. And they should be at least equal.”
This is misleading and possibly false. The US defense budget of $860 trillion is a bit more than twice the combined defense budgets of all other NATO members. However, the US is a worldwide power with worldwide security needs, and only a small portion of the US defense budget goes towards European security. Physical US troop presence in Europe is tiny: three combat brigades out of 81-82 available in the continent.
42:25 – Vance states that Ukraine is forcing conscripts to the front line. In response to a Zelensky offer to visit Ukraine and learn about the situation there first-hand, Vance calls that possibility propaganda.
“I have actually watched and seen the stories, and I know that what happens is that you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour Mr. President.”
This is false and one of the most odious claims made by a senior Trump administration official. It deserves condemnation by Congress.
Foreign dignitaries like Vance when first visiting Ukraine are often given access to Ukrainian war survivors and war veterans, and very frequently are taken on trips to the towns of Irpin or Bucha outside Kyiv, where Russian troops massacred hundreds of Ukrainian civilians.
Vance’s characterization of the Ukrainian state enabling foreign dignitary travel to eyewitness the massacre sites and mass graves of Ukrainian civilians murdered by Russian soldiers as “propaganda” is an almost textbook example of denial of war crimes.
49:25 – Trump warns Zelensky that he should be thankful to the US and allow the US to engineer a ceasefire deal, because failure to do so would lead to Ukraine’s destruction.
“You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. He [Vance] happens to be right about that. You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us you start having cards. Right now… you’re playing cards. You’re playing cards. You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. (Raising voice) You’re gambling with World War III! You’re gambling with World War III! And what you’re doing (raising voice more) is very disrespectful. Disrespectful! To the country. This country. That’s backed you. Far more than a lot of people said.”
Vance: “Have you said ‘thank you’ once?”
Regarding “thank you,” Zelensky has said that repeatedly, virtually on every occasion he makes a public appearance with foreign dignitaries, including at the outset of the Friday press conference.
As a wartime leader of a small nation needing allies, Zelensky’s position relative to the US, and Ukrainian prospects for continued resistance to Russia, strengthened massively over February 2022. This was thanks to a White House offensive against closer US relations with Europe and NATO, and repeated attacks by US officials against European commitments to collective security.
As a result of the US assault on Atlantic Alliance commitments and the proposition that Ukraine should be supported against Russia, the leadership of Europe’s three most powerful states – France, Germany and the UK – committed in the latter half of February to substantial defense spending increases and reiterated that their countries would support Ukraine even if the US stopped. Germany has the third largest economy in the world.
Combined with previous hard commitments of support from wealthy European states in Scandinavia, Benelux and in Eastern Europe, US support to Ukraine is prima facia not irreplaceable. Although it wasn’t just his doing, the fact is that Zelensky entered the White House on Friday with more hard non-US backing to the Ukrainian war effort, than at any other time in the war.
Trump’s argument that Ukraine is in a weak position is contradicted by the unarguable Ukrainian diplomatic success of lining up very strong European support, in case of a US betrayal. Judging by the size of the European states backing Ukraine and the hard anti-Russia tone of their rhetoric, objectively, Ukraine is better prepared to do without US support than at any time in its history.
Trump’s argument that Ukraine has no leverage (no cards) in the outcome of the war or negotiations to end it is further contradicted by the existence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) – a battle-tested force that outnumbers all NATO ground forces in Europe, including US units.
Regarding nuclear war, Ukraine gave away its nuclear weapons to Russia in 1994, at US behest, in exchange for promises from the US and Russia to support Ukraine’s territorial integrity. As a non-nuclear state, Ukraine is incapable of starting a nuclear exchange.
Trump’s accusation that Zelensky is responsible for increasing chances of nuclear war is misplaced.
Logically, if the US wanted to prevent the use of a nuclear weapon in the Russo-Ukrainian War, US diplomatic pressure should be placed on Russia, the owner of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal.
45:59 – Trump asserts that the US gave Ukraine support worth $350 billion. He goes on to claim that had the US not sent assistance to Ukraine, Russia would have defeated Ukraine in two weeks.
The claim about the value of the aid is false. The actual figure is around $110-120 billion.
Trump’s claim about the decisiveness of US arms to Ukraine in the first two weeks of the war is in wording nearly identical to Russian claims at the outset of the war that, no matter what weapons the Ukrainians had, Russia would defeat Ukraine in a matter of days.
As it is a hypothetical in the past, Trump’s claim about US arms enabling Ukraine to survive Russian assault for more than two weeks is impossible to prove or disprove.
However, most independent observers say the key factor in Russia’s failure to defeat Ukraine quickly in late February and March 2022 was a widespread will to resist and to defend home and family on the part of millions of Ukrainians, and a national leadership headed by Zelensky.
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