An invented general, fantasy billions, and endless leniency with Putin: How Donald Trump spreads fake news about Ukraine

An invented general, fantasy billions, and endless leniency with Putin: How Donald Trump spreads fake news about Ukraine The American president regularly disseminates half-truths and falsehoods about the war in Ukraine. Three examples from his recent television interview illustrate how he does this. The Russian stance of the Trump administration is controversial in the USA. According to polls, the public sympathizes more with Ukraine, and Congress explicitly demands stricter sanctions against Russia. But President Donald Trump has a powerful tool: He possesses the loudest megaphones in the country – daily he can address the public through his text messaging service Truth Social or the media that favors him. He does not take the facts exactly as they are. An end of last week's television interview with the Trump-friendly channel Newsmax provides insight into the typical patterns of his argumentation. These are fragments of disinformation that the president has used for a long time, without regard for reality. Three examples illustrate this: Democrats are to blame Trump is under pressure from his unpopular campaign against Iran, among other things. In the interview, he uses the opportunity to dismiss a frequently raised accusation. He claims that the Iran war is not the reason why American supplies of ammunition are insufficient. The responsibility lies with his predecessor, the Democrat Joe Biden. He allegedly gave the Ukrainians huge amounts of Patriot air defense missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles. “It was because of what Biden did with Ukraine.” – Excerpt from Trump's interview with Newsmax. This portrayal is not correct, as Ukraine never received American cruise missiles. Substantially, the deliveries of Patriot weapons, allegedly about 600 pieces, the exact figures are subject to secrecy. But the Pentagon's Arsenals did not empty themselves because of this. A sharp shortage only emerged when the USA used an estimated 1400 to 1800 pieces during the Iran war. Biden is also linked to another piece of false information in the interview. His predecessor allegedly gave the Ukrainians 350 billion dollars in military and financial aid, Trump criticized. This figure has been circulating in the White House for more than a year. It has never been proven. According to the most reliable source on international support for Ukraine, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the American aid from 2022 to early 2025 amounts to almost 130 billion dollars in converted value. Trump further claims in the interview that these aid packages were embezzled. The missiles delivered by Biden to Ukraine were allegedly sold on the black market. Since there are no indications of such sales, the statement is likely fabricated. Six years after his clear electoral defeat against Biden, Trump still wrestles with the then-result and spreads the lie that it was only due to forgeries. In the interview, he connects this to the claim that the war would never have broken out without the then "election manipulation." But Trump goes further in his reckoning with his political opponents. He sees the root of today's problems in the interview as the fact that in 2014 under the Democratic president Barack Obama "the Crimea was abandoned." He apparently means that the USA should not have allowed the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula at that time. However, the question of how remains unanswered. He also conceals the mastermind of the territorial seizure – the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, whom he presents as a good partner to the USA. “It actually began with Barack Hussein Obama.” – Excerpt from Trump's interview with Newsmax. Selensky is the problem While Trump carefully avoids naming Russia as an aggressor or assigning war guilt to his counterpart Putin, he criticizes the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as an obstacle to peace. On several occasions in recent days, including in the Newsmax interview, he called for new elections and a change at the Ukrainian leadership. This gives a false impression in the American public. First, Zelensky continues to enjoy high popularity – much higher than Trump in his own country – and second, the most promising rivals in Kyiv also demand a resolute armed resistance against Russia. A telling passage is an interview where Trump tries to explain the causes of the war. He sees them in a failed meeting between Putin and Zelensky, ultimately in the deep hatred between the two. “Zelensky hates Putin.” – Excerpt from Trump's interview with Newsmax. However, such a personalization of the conflict leads to a misleading simplification. Russia's aggressive neo-imperialist foreign policy, which poses a threat to the entire European security order, never appears in Trump's rhetoric. In the past, he even hinted that he would allow Russia an expanded power zone in Eastern Europe. A silly coincidence A strange piece of disinformation seems to have deeply imprinted itself on the American president's mind. In any case, Trump has spread it at least a dozen times. It is about the reason for Russia's defeat in the fight for Kyiv in the first weeks after the large-scale invasion of February 2022. Trump begins his invented story with the statement that the war should have only lasted one day. He expresses this view in the Newsmax interview, with almost a touch of regret, as if he had found a quick surrender of Ukraine most favorable. According to Trump's account, the Russians missed the lightning-fast conquest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv only by a silly coincidence. “The tanks could have driven on the main road directly to Kyiv. But the general, obviously not very good, took a detour to agricultural land, which was completely soaked by the heaviest rains in ten years. He drove directly into the mud, and it was like quicksand.” “It should have been a very fast war.” – Excerpt from Trump's interview with Newsmax. It is an entertaining story in which one almost feels pity for the unfortunate Russians and in which the skillful military resistance of the Ukrainians does not appear in a word. However, Trump's fantasy world does not correspond to the meteorological conditions of the time. In February 2022, there was deep winter in the area of Kyiv; intense rainfall is not reported. The Russian tanks did not attack the capital along a single route, but along three major axes, and they primarily used roads. They did get stuck, but not in the swamp, but on the traffic routes – partly due to fuel shortages or defects, partly due to Ukrainian counterattacks. “Russia behaved quite well” Why the American president ignores the Ukrainian defense performance and resorts to a fiction, remains a mystery. A connoisseur of both the USA and Ukraine, a native of Kyiv and current correspondent of the "Wall Street Journal," Yaroslav Trofimov, has a plausible answer: “If one believes that Russia is invincible and that Ukraine should surrender, one cannot accept the victory in the existential battle for Kyiv. Because this would mean admitting that Ukraine has trump cards and that its defeat in the war is not predetermined.” In light of the abundance of false statements by the American president, the impression naturally arises that Trump does not see a fundamental problem in a Russian victory. In front of journalists, he showed his proverbial leniency towards the Putin regime once again on Monday: “Russia has behaved quite well, to be frank, regarding Ukraine. It hasn't done much.” Newsletter “International – Midterms Special” Our Midterms newsletter informs you in a compact way from mid-October to mid-November about the most important developments, backgrounds, and facts surrounding the American midterm elections.