US President Donald Trump has hurled insults and personal attacks at the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and has since doubled down in a post on X, heading for 100 million views at the time this article was published.

Trump called Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections" who had lost the support of the Ukrainian people, telling him he "better move fast" to negotiate an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or he might not have a country left, among other things.

On Thursday, the US requested a joint press conference be canceled after talks between Zelenskyy and Trump's Ukraine envoy in Kyiv.

DW's Fact Check team takes an in-depth look at Trump's claims.

Is Zelenskyy a dictator who is refusing to hold elections?    

Claim: Trump said Zelenskyy was a "dictator without elections."

DW Fact check: False.

Zelenskyy was elected to a five-year term in April 2019, winning 74.96% of the vote in a second-round run-off with incumbent Petro Poroshenko.

According to the Ukrainian constitution, the next presidential election ought to have taken place on the final Sunday of March 2024, but it was postponed due to the imposition of martial law.

Article 19 of the Ukrainian law "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law" explicitly prohibits the holding of national and local elections during a state of war. The parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for October 2023, were also postponed under a corresponding constitutional law.

The current situation shows why democratic elections in a state of war can be problematic. Article 71 of the Ukrainian constitution stipulates that elections are to be "free and take place on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot."

But with millions of Ukrainians serving in the armed forces, having fled the country, or living in areas occupied by the Russian army, it would be impossible to ensure the entire electorate is given an equal chance to vote by the required standards.

Is Zelenskyy running low in the polls?

Claim: Trump has claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's approval ratings have plummeted, saying he was "very low in Ukrainian polls" with a "4% approval rating."

DW Fact check: False.

Zelenskyy "retains a fairly high level of public trust," a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found in early February 2025. According to the report, about 57% of Ukrainians said they trusted Zelenskyy. That's a slight uptick compared to the last survey in December 2024 with rates of 52%. However, only 1,000 adult Ukrainians living in the "territory of Ukraine controlled by the Government of Ukraine" were questioned for this.

But other polls show similar results. An earlier poll published by the International Republican Institute last fall said that 69% of Ukrainians approved of his actions and 42% even strongly opposed elections for a new President.

Trump has not given a source for his single-digit claim.

In response, Zelenskyy said these false figures were part of Russia's disinformation campaign and the US President "unfortunately lives in this disinformation space."

Has the US spent $350 billion on Ukraine?

Claim: "Zelenskyy talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion."

DW Factcheck: Unproven. 

Trump didn't provide any sources for these amounts and the sum differs greatly from figures published elsewhere.

According to the US government's Ukraine oversight working group, the US contribution to Ukraine aid totals $203 billion: "Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Congress has appropriated or otherwise made available nearly $183 billion for Operation Atlantic Resolve and the broader Ukraine response. Additionally, the United States provided $20 billion in loans as part of the G7 nations extraordinary revenue acceleration loans initiative."

However, in reporting about Ukraine aid, the media often cite data collected by the Ukraine Support Tracker (UST), a project by the German think tank, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The economists calculate that US commitments dedicated exclusively to support Ukraine in its war against Russia reached $128 billion as of December 31, 2024. Which is significantly less than the official US figures.

When asked about the gap between these figures and Trump's $350 billion claim, UST project leader Taro Nishikawa told DW: "This figure appears to be based on a different calculation and definition of aid. It may also include categories that we do not track in our dataset."

Can Ukraine-attached spending explain the gap?

The UST's dataset documentation shows how difficult it is to define Ukraine aid.

For example, UST calculations do not include activities such as the training of Ukrainian soldiers, aid from NGOs that may be co-financed by governments or incentives for companies to donate to Ukraine. There are also multi-billion military and intelligence expenses by the US Department of Defense and the United States European Command which are dedicated to the region, but not exclusively to Ukraine.

At the same time, some analysts say that a large share of Ukraine's aid remains in the US economy.

According to the US publication Lawfare: "Only a small percentage of the overall aid package takes the form of cash transfers to Kyiv." A significant part of the aid, the author writes, consists in paying US soldiers to train Ukrainian troops, or in sending weapons, ammunition and other military equipment from US stocks dedicated to rapid military aid under the Foreign Assistance Act. These stocks are then refilled by the US military industry.  While the US was subsidizing their economy the US government is still donating weaponry to Ukraine.

Even if you were to factor in all the funding somehow related to the war in Ukraine the UST had excluded from the grand total (see "Summary of US Acts" table), that would bring the overall US aid commitment for Ukraine up to $213 billion as of April 24, 2024 – a sum that surpasses the official figure, but still falls short of Trump's $350 billion claim.

Who has spent more on Ukraine: the USA or Europe?

Claim: "The United States has spent $200 billion more than Europe."

The claim fits Trump's talking point of everybody taking advantage of the US. But again, it lacks evidence.

DW Fact check: False.

According to UST data, the continent's countries, including European Union institutions, have committed to $124.5 billion on financial, military and humanitarian support for their neighbor in its war against Russia. Adding the $138.3 billion European nations, including EU members and non-members  — 14% more than the US, calculated by the same standards.

In addition, several countries have increased their defense budget in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine. For instance, the German government proposed a plan to spend €100 billion ($105 billion) in a five-year period starting in 2022 to strengthen the Bundeswehr.

According to the European Defence Agency (EDA), all 27 EU Member States spent 6% more on defense in 2022 than the year before and another 10% more in 2023. In both years combined the 27 countries spent an additional sum of more than €100 billion ($105 billion) compared to 2021.

Also not included here are services and aid to 6.3 million Ukrainians who fled their home country after the war started, according to data released by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). With what Trump refers to as "Europe" giving shelter to more than 70%, and the US receiving less than 5% of them, his claim does not appear any more reasonable.

 

Edited by: Rachel Baig