Article with only “AP’S ASSESSMENT” and “THE FACTS”
WHAT TRUMP SAID: “President Zelenskyy said last week that he doesn’t know where half of the money is that we gave him. Well, we gave them, I believe, $350 billion.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Zelenskyy “retains a fairly high level of public trust” — about 57 percent - according to a report released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. While exact figures of the number of deaths are unknown, Zelenskyy said earlier this month that over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022. He has also said that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but that no exact figures would be available until the war was over.
THE FACTS:According to a U.S interagency oversight group that tracks aid to Ukraine. the U.S. Congress has appropriated around $183 billion in assistance to Kyiv since the start of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022 — a little more than half of Trump’s claim of $350 billion.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Feb. 1, Zelenskyy said some $70 billion worth of military aid had been delivered to Ukraine, and that another $6 billion had come in the form of things like training programs, humanitarian relief and economic and infrastructure recovery.
As for the rest of the assistance approved by the U.S. Congress, Zelenskyy said it never reached Ukraine. “I don’t know where all this money is,” he said.
Zelenskyy’s statement led to a flurry of spurious claims in some news media, amplified by Trump and Elon Musk, that some $100 billion of U.S. assistance had disappeared somewhere in Ukraine.