Checking Donald Trump's facts about the war in Ukraine

US President Donald Trump has appeared to be accused of Ukraine of being responsible for the war with Russia, in a storm of claims from his Mar-Lgo mansion in Florida.

Speaking to reporters, Trump also made allegations of President Volodimir Zelenski's popularity and noticed that Ukraine had not yet held scheduled elections due to military situation. Later, he doubled these comments in a fiery truth social publication on Wednesday.

Trump's accusations – some of which seemed to reflect general Russian talk points for the war – came only hours after US officials met a Russian delegation in Riyadh to find conversations to end the conflict that was raging for almost three years.

Later, Zelenski accused Trump of “living in a misinformation space” created by Russia.

BBC Verify has verified Trump's claims.

Initially, Trump drew attention to the fact that Ukraine did not hold the 2019 presidential election, when Zelenski – earlier a comedian without a political base – swept away.

He repeated allegations in a social post about the truth, accusing the Ukrainian leader of being a “dictator without election.”

However, Zelenski's first five -year term was due to end in May 2024. However, Ukraine was in martial law after the Russian invasion of February 2022, which means that the elections were stopped.

Ukraine of Ukraine were drawn up in 2015 – shortly after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and years before Zelenski and its servant of the people party to come to power.

Independent OSCE observers declared the 2019 election. were “competitive and basic freedoms in general have been respected”S

Zelenski win 73% of the vote In the second round.

Zelenski swore to hold new elections after the conflict ended and has not yet confirmed that he intends to stand. Some experts note that holding an election in Ukraine before the conflict was completed would be practically impossible, as Russian attacks on many cities continue and millions of citizens are displaced abroad or live under Russian occupation.

Trump's intervention on the topic came only hours after the Kremlin has questioned Zelenski's legitimacy, since his term of office has ended, the claim that Moscow has repeatedly made in recent months. On January 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Zelenski “illegitimate” in an interview with Russian media.

Referring to the electoral situation, Trump seemed to be aware that this was a often Russian accusation used to undermine Zelenski, telling his press conference: “This is not Russian, this is something that comes from me from other countries.”

Zelenski, for his part, stated that it would be “absolutely irresponsible to throw the topic of election” in the middle of the conflict.

President Trump also said the evaluation of Zelenski's approval had dropped to 4%.

It is not clear what source the president quotes as he has not presented evidence. We asked the White House to clarify this.

The official voting is limited and it is extremely difficult to conduct accurate studies during the war. Millions of Ukrainians have escaped and Russia has occupied about one fifth of the country.

However, some polls may be done by phone. A study this month found that 57% of Ukrainians said they were trusting the president, according to Ukraine -based in Ukraine International Institute of Sociology of KyivS

However, this dropped from 77% at the end of 2023 and 90% in May 2022 – which suggests that the President was eliminated in his popularity.

Some other polls suggest that Zelenski is lagging behind his closest rival, former army chief Valerius, stamped, in the first round of all future elections, which shows that the two will face each other in expiration.

As a result of Trump's comments, some major Russian media seized at the request and quoted a survey conducted by the MP from Ukrainian and Zelenski, Olexander Dubinski, Telegram, which they claimed to support Trump's assessment.

Duban has been accused of betrayal in Ukraineand accused of “operating at the request of Russian intelligence” – which he denies.

The Ukrainian authorities expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that they were not part of Tuesday's conversations in Riyadh. But Trump rejected these concerns, telling reporters that Ukraine had three years to end the war before it turned out to be accused of Kiev at the beginning of the conflict.

“You never had to start it,” he said. The Kremlin had previously accused Ukraine at the beginning of the war against Russia.

“It was they who began the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told the US presenter Tucker Carlson in February 2024.

Ukraine did not start the war. Russia launched a full -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, annexing the Crimea in 2014.

The annexation came after the pro -Russian president of Ukraine was removed from popular demonstrations.

Russia also supported proxy forces that seized areas of Eastern Ukraine and accused the new government of Kiev in discrimination and genocide against Russian speakers. Thehe Court Reject Moscow's allegations.

Following the failure of agreements aimed at ending the conflict after 2014-Russia, a mass accumulation of troops at its border with Ukraine began at the end of 2021.

Putin started the invasion of February 24, 2022, saying that the purpose of the operation was to “demilitarize and de-nasify” Volodimir Zelenski's pro-Western government and prevent the country from joining NATO.

In the last parliamentary elections of Ukraine, Support for end applicants was 2%S It should also be noted that Zelenski is a Jew and that his party is considered a centrist.

And while NATO employees said in 2021 that Ukraine was a candidate to join the Western Union in the future, this is not part of any official process.

Additional BBC monitoring.