Trump and Putin’s history of misleading on Ukraine, US elections: 7 examples before Alaska summit

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have more than a little history. 

While running for office in 2016, Trump praised Putin and said Putin praised him. When they met in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018, Trump appeared to take Putin at his word when he falsely said he didn’t interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

"I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia," Trump said. "I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be."

In 2022, days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump complimented as "genius" Putin’s decision to declare breakaway regions of Ukraine as independent. After reclaiming the White House a second time, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Putin’s war enemy. But as months passed without a peace deal, Trump expressed frustration with Putin’s ongoing war strategy.

"A lot of people are dying and it should end," Trump said in a July 8 Cabinet meeting. "And I don't know, we get a lot of bullsh-- thrown at us by Putin."

As the leaders prepare to meet face-to-face on Aug. 15 in Alaska, a former Russian colony, Trump says his goal is to reach a war-ending deal. 

If history is any guide, Trump and Putin’s dialogue will need fact-checking. In 2017, PolitiFact named Trump’s assertions that Russia’s involvement in that election was "a made-up story" its Lie of the Year. Five years later, Putin invoked a conspiracy theory about Ukraine’s history to justify his country’s invasion and his administration pushed falsehoods to cover up the war’s toll, earning PolitiFact’s 2022 Lie of the Year designation.

Here’s a fact-checkers’ guide to what the two leaders have said about each other, Russia and the Russia-Ukraine war.

RELATED: All of our fact-checks about Russia

Trump called on Russia to ‘find’ Clinton emails, and then said it was a joke

In 2016, Trump spoke to a roomful of TV cameras and reporters (including this fact-checker) with a straight face about his then-political opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

"Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," he said. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens."

Trump years later said the media distorted his comment by cutting out "the laugher, the joke." We rated his statement False. No one cut out the laughter because there was none to cut. 

Both Trump and Putin falsely said Russia had no involvement in the 2016 U.S. election

When talking about the 2016 election, Trump frequently refers to what he calls the "Russia hoax" — what he maintains is a fabricated story about Russia’s involvement in his winning election against Clinton.

Probes led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found evidence Russia interfered in the election. The committee’s 2020 report concluded that "the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."

Mueller’s 2019 report cleared the Trump campaign of criminally conspiring with the Kremlin but reaffirmed the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia favored Trump over Clinton, and noted that the Trump campaign believed it would benefit on Election Day from Moscow's interference.

Putin also denied Russian interference. During a joint press conference in 2018 in Helsinki, Putin said, "The Russian state has never interfered ... into internal American affairs, including election process." We rated that Pants on Fire!

Putin’s falsehoods about Ukraine

Putin and his government have repeatedly lied to wage a deadly war. 

Five days after Russian tanks crossed Ukraine’s border, the Russian embassy in Canada tweeted a verifiably false denial that any such occupation had occurred:

"The Russian army does not occupy Ukrainian territory and takes all measures to preserve the lives and safety of civilians," the tweet said, parroting earlier statements from Putin. 

Even Russia’s state-sponsored media had reported otherwise. As journalists chronicled the violence and scenes of possible war crimes emerged, Russia’s leadership claimed it was Russia that was under attack, not Ukraine. By accounts posted in Kremlin-run Telegram channels and Russian embassy tweets, the dead were not dead, the invasion was not an invasion and Ukraine’s allies were complicit in atrocities.

Putin repeatedly asserted that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian people separate from Russia. 

In 1990, Ukraine's parliament declared its independence from the Soviet Union, a call it repeated in August 1991. Ukraine finally gained its independence four months later. In December 1991, Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence, and within days, the USSR dissolved.

Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine by claiming that Russia seeks to "denazify" Ukraine. There’s no evidence Ukraine is a Nazi state. Historians who study genocides and the Holocaust decried Putin’s narrative as "factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive." Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust. 

Neo-Nazi groups exist in Ukraine — as they do in the U.S. and Russia — but Putin overstated their power. 

Both Trump and Putin falsely blamed the war on Ukraine

In February, as the war’s third anniversary neared, Trump said Zelenskyy "started" the war. That’s Pants on Fire. 

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian forces launched an invasion on Ukraine, a country that the night before was at peace. As people were sleeping, Russian troops and tanks rolled into Ukraine and missiles poured down in what U.S. military analysts called the largest military operation in Europe since World War II. The attack followed weeks of Russian military maneuvers. 

Trump also called Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections," which is a mischaracterization.

Zelenskyy was democratically elected in 2019 to a five-year term with more than 73% of the vote. He would have been up for reelection in spring 2024. However, Ukraine imposed martial law after Russia’s invasion. Ukrainian law prohibits elections under martial law.

Putin has also falsely blamed the war on Ukraine, saying ethnic Russians in Ukraine face genocide. International observers found no evidence of that.

Trump exaggerated the amount of U.S. funding for Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance had a heated meeting Feb. 28, 2025, in the White House Oval Office. (AP)

During a tense Oval Office meeting in February, Trump told Zelenskyy the U.S. gave Ukraine $350 billion.

But our analysis at the time found that figure was wrong; the White House didn’t respond to us when we initially asked about the figure. Cost estimates of U.S. spending on Ukraine were in the $175 billion to $185 billion range, Mark Cancian, a Center for Strategic and International Studies senior defense and security adviser, told PolitiFact.

Ukraine Oversight, a U.S. government website created in 2014, said that as of Sept. 30, 2024, the U.S. had spent $183 billion to help Ukraine. (As of the end of March 2025 the website showed $184.8 billion.)

Trump repeated the $350 billion figure in early August. Days before the Alaska summit, a White House spokesperson told PolitiFact that his figure included direct funding to Ukraine as well as indirect economic costs. Among them: war-related inflation and lost trade due to sanctions.

The White House cited a CNN article about inflation and an excerpt in President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget message that said "the global pandemic and Putin’s illegal war against the people of Ukraine have led to inflation all over the world." But the war was not the only cause of inflation.

Trump distorted Obama-era review of Russian election interference

In July, Trump sought to rewrite history about the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a report that she said showed that President Barack Obama’s administration had withheld information on the intelligence community’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump said the report showed Obama tried to "lead a coup" with Clinton, after Trump won the 2016 election but before he had taken office. We rated that Pants on Fire!

Gabbard’s report pointed to Obama officials’ December 2016 decision to hold off on giving Obama a daily intelligence brief that Russian actors did not influence election results via cyberattacks. 

The records showed Obama then sought a more in-depth intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election, with a look backward and ahead into Russia's capabilities. That doesn’t amount to a coup.

Obama acknowledged that his party lost the election and facilitated the transition to Trump’s presidency. 

Trump downplayed Obama’s aid to Ukraine

Speaking about U.S. aid to Ukraine, Trump said Aug. 11 that "they say that Obama gave them sheets, and I gave them Javelins."

Trump made similar remarks in 2019 about Obama sending "pillows and sheets." (Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko had used similar language in 2014, telling Congress, "Blankets and night vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with a blanket.")

The Obama administration did not provide lethal military aid that Ukraine asked for in 2014. However, it did provide other military equipment and training. We found in 2019 that the United States had provided $1.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, on average $300 million a year. 

CORRECTION,  Aug. 14, 2025: This story has been corrected to more accurately reflect Trump’s comments in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, about Russian interference, and his February 2025 statement about giving Ukraine $350 billion. Zelenskyy was last elected in 2019, but we inaccurately said his landslide victory was in March; it was in April.

RELATED: 2017 Lie of the Year: Russian election interference is a 'made-up story'

RELATED: Lie of the Year 2022: Putin’s lies to wage war and conceal horror in Ukraine