Are Zelenskyy's statements on U.S. aid received by Ukraine during an interview evidence of corruption and abuse of presidential power for personal benefits? No, that's not true. In an interview with the Associated Press on February 1, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he did not know where $100 billion from U.S. funding went, not that he embezzled them, as implied in a video circulating on social media. The conversation touched on various Ukraine-related topics, and Zelenskyy said that Ukraine received aid from the United States worth around $76 billion, not hundreds of billions, as alleged in the video.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) posted on TikTok on February 3, 2025. The person speaking is Radovan Vich, a member of parliament for the Czech opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy Party.
Vich says in Czech, translated into English by Lead Stories staff:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted today that he had no idea where $100 billion from the $177 billion that was sent to Ukraine, disappeared. It is a clear sign of corruption and it is a clear sign that presidential powers were abused for his and his oligarchs' benefits. I think we should unambiguously oppose further aid for Ukraine that has cost us so far 122 billion korunas...
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Feb 7 18:08:56 2025 UTC)
Radovan Vich (archived here) is a member of the lower house of the Czech Parliament for the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party, or SPD, a populist opposition party that is known for its anti-immigration (archived here) and anti-Ukraine aid stance (archived here). In the above video, he makes unfounded assumptions, based on an exclusive interview (archived here) given by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the Associated Press, published on February 1, 2025.
In the interview, updated by the AP a day before Vich´s post appeared on TikTok on February 3, 2025, Zelenskyy says that Ukraine received less than the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid allocated by the United States for Ukraine. There is no mention of oligarchs or any alleged embezzlement of funds worth $100 billion, or that the money went missing, as stated by Vich in the above TikTok video.
The interview is over one hour long and can be viewed on YouTube, on the account of the Office of the President of Ukraine here (archived here). In the interview, the president is asked by a journalist around the 40-minute mark to comment on the U.S. freezing of foreign aid to organizations also working in Ukraine, and whether he is concerned that this might be followed by a possible freeze of military aid for Ukraine as well. In his answer, Zelenskyy emphasizes that aid for humanitarian organizations and military aid for Ukraine are two different things.
He then says that "we hear" from the United States, that it gave Ukraine hundreds of billions (archived here) - and mentions the $177 billion figure. He then says in Ukrainian, as translated by YouTube subtitles and Lead Stories staff: "I am telling you as the president of a warring country, we got over $75 billion. So, when people talk about $177 billion or even $200 billion, we never got that... We are talking about specific things because we received it not in money but in weapons."
Zelenskyy then specifies that Ukraine received $70 billion worth of weapons. There are also costs linked to training, transport, humanitarian aid, Zelenskyy explains. He then says in Ukrainian, translated by YouTube subtitles and Lead Stories staff: "But when they say that Ukraine during the war received $200 billion to support the army - it is not true. I do not know where all this money went. Maybe it is true on paper with hundreds of different programs, maybe, I will not argue. We are very grateful for everything... we got more than $70 billion, $76 billion... It is a great help but it is not $200 billion."
The aid worth 122 billion Czech korunas also mentioned in the TikTok video by Vich refers most likely to a calculation from a Czech economic analyst Lukas Kovanda, who published a similar estimate (archived here) on his website in October 2024. Kovanda´s 120 billion koruna estimate is based on Czech data related to the total aid to Ukraine provided by Czech authorities, as well as data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany (archived here).
According to Ukraine Oversight, the Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve (archived here), as of September 30, 2024, the U.S. Ukraine response funding totaled nearly $183 billion, with $130.1 billion obligated and $86.7 billion disbursed. It is not immediately clear (archived here) how Zelenskyy arrived at the figures he cited and why it differs from official U.S. figures.
Ukraine ranks better than Russia but worse than members of the EU, a bloc it aspires to join (archived here), in terms of the perceived level of corruption in the country. Transparency International ranked Ukraine (archived here) 105 out of 180 countries in the corruption index for 2024. It is better than Russia, ranked 154, but it is still behind members of the EU, which Ukraine wishes to join. Germany ranked 15, France 25, and Hungary 82, according to the Index.
The 2024 European Commission report stated that Ukraine had made progress (archived here) in preventing and combating corruption by strengthening the anti-corruption institutional framework and gaining experience in investigations and trials of major corruption cases, but also said that judicial reforms still need to be carried out.
