It seems that US President Donald Trump is accusing Ukraine of being responsible for war with Russia, in a wave of his Palace Palace, Mar Lago in Florida.

Speaking to reporters, Trump also made calls for the popularity of President Folomer Zelinski and noted that Ukraine has not yet made the elections due to martial law. Those comments later doubled in a fiery social publication on Wednesday.

Trump’s accusations – some of which seemed to reflect the common Russian conversation points about the war – came a few hours after US officials met a Russian delegation in Riyadh to open talks to end the conflict, which broke out nearly three years ago.

Zelinski later accused Trump of “living in the area of ​​misinformation” that Russia has established.

BBC verifies Trump’s allegations that define the facts.

Trump initially drew attention to the fact that Ukraine had not held presidential elections since 2019, when Zelinski – by a comedian without a political base – was overwhelmed.

He reiterated allegations in fact, the true social fact in which the Ukrainian leader accused of “a dictator without elections.”

Zelinski’s first position was scheduled to end in his five -year position in May 2024. However, Ukraine was under combat law since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which means that the elections were suspended.

Martial laws in Ukraine were formulated in 2015 – shortly after Russia annexed the Crimea and years before Zelinski and his CEO of the People’s Party arrived in power.

Independent observers from OSCE 2019 said It was “competitive and essential freedoms was generally respected”.

Zelinski 73 % of the vote won In the second round.

Zelensky pledged to hold new elections as soon as the conflict has ended and has not yet confirmed that it is intended to stand. Some experts noted that holding elections in Ukraine before the end of the conflict will be practically impossible, as Russian attacks continue on many cities and that millions of citizens are displaced abroad or live under the Russian occupation.

Trump’s intervention on this issue came a few hours after the Kremlin’s legitimacy of Zelinski’s legitimacy with the end of his term in office, a claim made by Moscow again and again in the past months. On January 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Zelensky as “illegal” in an interview with the Russian media.

In reference to the electoral situation, Trump seemed to realize that he was a repeated Russian claim that he used to undermine Zelinski, saying in his press conference: “This is not a Russian thing, this is something that comes from me, from other countries.”

For his part, Zelensky said previously that he would be “completely irresponsible to throw the subject of the elections” in the midst of the conflict.

President Trump also claimed that the Zelinski approval classification decreased to 4 %.

It is not clear the source that the president was martyred because he did not provide evidence. We have asked the White House to clarify this.

Official voting is very limited and it is very difficult to make precise surveys during the war period. Millions of Ukrainians escaped and Russia occupied about a fifth of the country.

However, it was possible to make some voting over the phone. A survey this month found that 57 % of the Ukrainians said they trust the president, according to Ukraine headquarters. Kyiv International Sociology Institute.

However, this decreased from 77 % at the end of 2023, and 90 % in May 2022 – indicating that the president suffered from a decrease in his popularity.

Some other opinion polls indicate that Zelinski is behind his closest rival, former army commander Valerie Zaluzni, in the first round of any future elections, indicating that the two will face each other in the executive flow.

In the wake of Trump’s comments, some of the main Russian media seized the claim and pointed to a poll conducted by the Ukrainian MP and critic Zelensky, Oleksandr Dubinsky, on Telegram who claimed Trump’s evaluation.

Dobinsky He was accused of betrayal in UkraineHe accused “work at the request of Russian intelligence” – which he denies.

The Ukrainian authorities have expressed their dissatisfaction with not being part of Tuesday’s talks in Riyadh. But Trump rejected these concerns, and reported that Ukraine had three years to end the war, before they blamed Kiev for the start of the conflict.

“You should never start,” he said. The Kremlin previously accused Ukraine of starting the war against Russia.

“They were the ones who started the war in 2014. Our goal was to stop this war. We did not start this war in 2022,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine did not start the war. Russia launched a large -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after the inclusion of Crimea in 2014.

The annexation came after the President of Ukraine supported Russia by popular demonstrations.

Russia also supported the agent’s forces that seized the East Ukraine regions, and accused the new government in Kiev of discrimination and genocide against Russian speakers. the International Court of Justice Moscow’s claims refused.

After the failure of agreements aimed at ending the conflict after 2014-Russia began a tremendous accumulation of forces on its borders with Ukraine in late 2021.

Putin launched the invasion on February 24, 2022, saying that the aim of the operation is to “cancel the obscure and dinner” of the pro -Western government in Volodimir Zellinski and prevent the country from joining NATO.

In the recent parliamentary elections in Ukraine, The support of the advanced right candidates was 2 %. It should also be noted that Zelinski is a Jew and that his party is a medium.

While NATO officials said in 2021 that Ukraine was a candidate to join the Western Alliance in the future, it was not part of any official operation.

Additional reports by BBC monitoring.