President Donald Trump was swiftly fact-checked after he denied calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator"—despite saying it publicly eight days prior.
Trump's new remarks came yesterday, a day before his scheduled meeting with Zelenskyy at the White House to sign a preliminary deal giving the U.S. access to Ukraine’s critical raw materials in exchange for potential future aid.
The agreement doesn’t offer clear security guarantees, which Zelenskyy plans to push for, but it does propose a joint Reconstruction Investment Fund. This fund would manage revenues from Ukraine’s natural resources, like oil, gas, and rare earth minerals, with the goal of reinvesting in Ukraine’s recovery and development.
Trump was taking questions from reporters when one asked him if he "still think[s] Zelenskyy is a dictator"—which Trump denied ever saying:
"Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that. Next question."
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
But Trump did say that.
Earlier this month, Trump showed little patience for Ukraine’s objections to being left out of the U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia. He repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s leaders should never have let the conflict begin, suggesting Kyiv should have made concessions to Russia before its troops invaded in 2022.
The tension intensified between Trump and Zelenskyy when Trump posted on Truth Social that Zelenskyy is "a Dictator without Elections" and took credit for early steps toward negotiating an end to the war.
Trump claimed that Zelenskyy's approval rating in Ukraine was just 4%, despite a poll released last week by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showing that 57% of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy.
He also suggested that Zelenskyy would lose if an election were held. Zelenskyy had canceled the spring 2024 election, citing the ongoing war and martial law restrictions, in accordance with the Ukrainian Constitution.
Oh, and the conservative, anti-Trump news and opinion website The Bulwark had the receipts.
Trump was harshly criticized.
Zelenskyy, for his part, has said that while he has "great respect" for Trump "as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for," Trump "unfortunately lives in this disinformation space."
Zelenskyy has continued to speak to the United Nations (UN), foreign governments, and other governmental bodies as he's pleaded for financial, military, and verbal support to defend his nation from Russian aggression.
Russian President Vladimir Putin aims to curtail the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), seeking to bar Ukraine from joining the alliance in a bid to assert Russia’s influence over its neighbors, aspirations that gained further prominence after Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Although Ukraine is not yet a member of NATO, it is partnered with the military alliance. This development angered Putin, who views Ukraine not as an independent nation but as land lost as a result of the end of the Cold War, which resulted in the Soviet Union's collapse and diminished Russia's superpower status.
Putin had left world leaders guessing as to whether or not he actually wanted to proceed with an invasion though he clearly wants NATO to curb military exercises in Ukraine and in other former Soviet satellite states, demands that resulted in a diplomatic stalemate.
