THE FACTS: On February 24, 2022, Russia’s troops crossed the border in a full-fledged invasion that Putin attempted to justify by falsely claiming it was necessary to safeguard Russian-speaking residents in eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO. But Russia’s attack on Ukraine did not begin then. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin noticed indicators that Ukraine was moving away from Russia’s sphere of influence and toward ties with Western European countries. Putin illegally grabbed the Crimean Peninsula and launched a military invasion in the eastern Ukrainian area of Donbas, resulting in a long-running conflict that has killed thousands. That crisis simmered until 2022, when Putin authorized what he described as military maneuvers along Ukraine’s border. He informed the globe that around 150,000 soldiers

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, holds a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. According to the Associated Press, Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians Military position. Furthermore, those fighting would be barred from running for office, despite the fact that Ukrainian law guarantees them that right.

Many Ukrainians live in Russian-occupied territories, making it impossible for them to vote. Furthermore, because Russia continues to hit both military and civilian targets across the nation on a regular basis, crowding millions of residents into packed polling booths may pose an extra risk. What Trump said was this: “The leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating.” THE FACTS: Zelenskyy “retains a fairly high level of public trust” — around 57%, according to a research released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institution of Sociology, whose executive director is Anton Hrushetskyi.

THE FACTS: Zelenskyy “retains a fairly high level of public trust” — around 57%, according to a research released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institution of Sociology, whose executive director is Anton Hrushetskyi. Speaking in Kyiv on Wednesday, Zelenskyy stated that Trump’s statistic, for which he provided no sources, was “disinformation” originating in Russia, and that the president “unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.” Zelenskyy stated that in the next weeks, he will commission pollsters to perform surveys on the public’s trust in him and share the results with the Trump administration. TRUMP SAID: “When you see what’s happened in Ukraine with millions of people slain, including the army, millions of civilians killed, and a major percentage of their cities torn down down to the ground, I don’t know how anybody even lives there.”

While specific estimates for the number of dead are unknown, Zelenskyy stated earlier this month that more over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the full-scale war began in February 2022. He has also stated that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in seized areas of Ukraine, but that specific data will not be accessible until the war ends. The latest recent figures from the Russian Defense Ministry, published in January 2023, indicated just over 6,000 military deaths, however estimates from US and UK authorities put the figure much higher.