Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy say the United States should send its sons and daughters to war now to fight for Ukraine against Russia? No, that's not true: His quote was taken out of context. Zelenskyy was addressing a hypothetical situation of what he believes would happen if Ukraine were to lose the war and Russia were to enter the Baltic states. In such a scenario, the president said, the U.S. would be forced to fight.
The claim appeared in a Twitter post (archived here) on February 28, 2023. The post included a short video of Zelenskyy speaking and a caption that read:
Volodymyr Zelensky is a total sociopath. Screw Zelensky. Fuck Ukraine. After these comments, I'm officially supporting Putin.
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Wed Mar 1 15:31:35 2023 UTC)
In the clipped video, an English translator indicates that Zelenskyy says:
The U.S. will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending [our] sons and daughters to war. And they will have to fight because it's NATO that we're talking about and they will be dying, God forbid, because it's a horrible thing.
His quote is authentic, but it's missing crucial context.
Zelenskyy was not saying that the United States should send its sons and daughters to war now. He was speaking hypothetically, about what he believes would happen if Ukraine were to lose the war.
His full quote is as follows:
If it happens so that Ukraine -- due to various opinions and weakening and depleting of assistance -- loses, Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO member states, and then the U.S. will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending [our] sons and daughters to war. And they will have to fight because it's NATO that we're talking about and they will be dying, God forbid, because it's a horrible thing.
You can listen to Zelenskyy's comment, in context, below:
He was responding to a reporter's question about polls in the United States that show a growing number of Americans believe the U.S. is giving too much support to Ukraine. Zelenskyy was asked what his message to those Americans would be.
Previous Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Zelenskyy can be found here.
