Latest fact checks & sources

There is no credible poll in Ukraine that shows Zelensky with an approval rating in the single digits. Surveys consistently show him in the 50-60 percent approval range, down from the 75-90 percent marks he was getting earlier in the war. February’s KIIS poll showed 57 percent of Ukrainians trust Zelensky, which is a higher level of support than President Trump has received in recent polls from Gallup (48 percent) and YouGov (47 percent).

Despite the US president’s claims of low support, Zelenskyy’s approval rating reached 57% in February – higher than Trump’s own.

Data released by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) shows that while Zelensky’s support base has decreased since early 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it is still far higher than Trump’s claim of four percent. In a poll conducted between February 4-9, 57 percent of adults said they trusted Zelensky, while 37 percent of respondents said that they do not and six percent said it was hard to say.

True. JD Vance did say that “military tools of leverage” could be used if Moscow did not cooperate with the terms of a negotiation that ended fighting between Russia and Ukraine. He did rule out U.S. deployment, saying “the president is very clear that whenever he walks into negotiation, everything is on the table.” While Vance claimed his words were “twisted,” a full transcript shows he did not rule out military action.

Russian disinformation campaigns have sought to manipulate Germany’s upcoming general election. How successful have they been, and what’s the German government doing about this interference?

There are no estimates that 1.5 million Russian soldiers have been killed and wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine. Recent analyses suggest manpower losses of around 780,000 as of early January 2025. Ukrainian government estimates from February 2025 claim 850,000 Russian troop losses. While the Ukrainian government is thought to have overcounted Russian losses and undercounted its own, some of its recent assessments have been similar to those by government and expert analyses outside of Kyiv. An independent analyst told Newsweek that Trump’s estimate of Russian losses had “no basis in reality.”

On Jan. 27, Andrey Isayev, a member of Russia’s State Duma (the lower house of parliament), accused U.S. President Donald Trump of trying to “rudely” force Russian President Vladimir Putin to start peace negotiations with Ukraine. […] “Trump threatened our president rather rudely, it must be said, pressuring to start the negotiations and reminding of Qaddafi’s fate.” The claim is false.

On February 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he had only received $75 billion of the $175 billion the United States had spent on Ukraine. The cry went up, what happened to the other $100 billion? Was it lost or stolen? The answer is no. Only part of the aid goes through Ukrainian control. A large part pays for activities as a result of the war but not to Ukraine directly. These include the United States training of Ukrainian forces, global humanitarian assistance, additional costs of U.S. surge forces in Europe, and intelligence support for both NATO and Ukraine. As CSIS has reported before, “aid to Ukraine” is a misnomer because 90 percent of military aid is spent in the United States. Of aid overall, 60 percent is spent in the United States, about 25 percent is spent in Ukraine, and the final 15 percent is spent globally.

Our rating: Manipulated media The video is a fabrication that wasn’t reported or published by E! News, a company spokesperson said. The video is consistent with material created by a Russia-aligned influence campaign, disinformation experts said.

On February 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he had only received $75 billion of the $175 billion the United States had spent on Ukraine. The cry went up, what happened to the other $100 billion? Was it lost or stolen? The answer is no. Only part of the aid goes through Ukrainian control. A large part pays for activities as a result of the war but not to Ukraine directly. These include the United States training of Ukrainian forces, global humanitarian assistance, additional costs of U.S. surge forces in Europe, and intelligence support for both NATO and Ukraine. As CSIS has reported before, “aid to Ukraine” is a misnomer because 90 percent of military aid is spent in the United States. Of aid overall, 60 percent is spent in the United States, about 25 percent is spent in Ukraine, and the final 15 percent is spent globally.

WHAT WAS CLAIMED: E! News published a video stating celebrities received funds from USAID to visit Ukraine. OUR VERDICT: False. The video is fake and there’s no evidence USAID funded the visits.

The E!News portal never published such a story, and the widely circulated news is fake, debunked by both the media and the celebrities who visited Ukraine.

Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and other prominent conservatives are sharing a video that claims to show E! News reporting that the US’s humanitarian agency paid millions of dollars to celebrities including Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to visit Ukraine and help boost President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity amid the country’s war with Russia. But the clip is not an authentic report, a spokesperson for the entertainment news channel told AFP, and Stiller has publicly rejected the allegations as false.

Much of the money the U.S. has dedicated for Ukraine aid is spent in the U.S. on domestic weapons manufacturers and U.S. military and government operations. Direct military support to Ukraine totaled about $70 billion out of the $175 billion Congress has appropriated. The money isn’t being laundered, it’s being spent as Congress intended.

The claim that the LA Fire Department (LAFD) was impacted in its ability to fight the recent wildfires due to its donations to Ukraine was also promoted by writer and entrepreneur John LeFevre (archived here), who linked donations to Ukraine to current resource shortages. In March 2022, during the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fire departments across California, including Los Angeles County, donated some surplus equipment sitting in storage, including hoses, nozzles, helmets, gloves, boots, and other personal protective gear, as well as medical supplies. The donation did not include any critical equipment or heavy machinery. There is no suggestion that the previous donations to Ukraine have impacted this particular situation.

As Ukraine braces for colder months, a well-coordinated and adaptive humanitarian response will be fundamental to help save lives. Here are 5 facts you need to know about the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine:

Advertising campaign calling for “stand with Ukraine,” which was allegedly initiated by the Ukrainian government, is fake. The corporation that installed the billboard shown in the video denied the existence of such an advertisement.

The New York Times article does indeed contain a prediction that Russia may outpace European countries and the United States in terms of economic growth this year. However, this forecast does not belong to the NYT economic columnist Patricia Cohen, as the Russian media claim, but to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Also, Russian media cover only a part of the article – the part about the resilience of the Russian economy to Western sanctions. Instead, the main idea of the publication, which is to prove that the Russian economy is currently working to wage war in Ukraine, remains unaddressed by propagandists. Russian publications also ignore the problems in the consumer sector that Russians are currently facing.

This video has never been shown on Ukrainian television. To create a fake video, its authors used the real story of the American news program CBS Mornings and replaced its audio track.

None of the ally states, except aggressive Russia, have any territorial claims to Ukraine. Experts suggest rebuilding post-war Ukraine using the experience of the Second World War aftermath.