Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy officially declare war on Russia's allies, Iran and North Korea? No, that's not true: Despite what some social media posts are saying, as of this writing neither Ukrainian government sites, the Iranian Embassy in Ukraine nor news media have mentioned any such declaration of war. In public speeches Zelenskyy has described Iran and North Korea's shipments of military aid to Russia as participation in the war against Ukraine on Russia's side and he has called them accomplices of Russia.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 16, 2024. Above a photo of Zelenskyy, it said:
BREAKING:
Zelensky declared WAR on Iran and North Korea:
"Ukraine is at war with three countries, Russia, Iran and North Korea" - Zelensky
🇺🇦🇷🇺🇮🇷🇰🇵
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 17 17:22:00 2024 UTC)
No declaration of war
According to the Constitution of Ukraine (archived here), which can be found on the Ukrainian legislature's website, the powers of parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, include:
... declaration of a state of war and conclusion of peace at the request of the President of Ukraine, approval of the decision of the President of Ukraine on the use of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations in the event of armed aggression against Ukraine.
Had Ukraine declared war on Iran or North Korea, as of October 17, 2024, that would have been reflected on the legislature's website. But a Google search of the site for content based on the English-language keywords seen here (archived here), posted between February 24, 2022, the day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and this writing, returned only two results.
Neither included remarks from Zelenskyy about a formal declaration of war on Iran or North Korea or even mentioned Zelenskyy. One result (archived here) was for a September 25, 2023 visit by the NATO-Ukraine Interparliamentary Council ; the second (archived here) was for a March 28, 2024, speech by French National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet to the Ukrainian legislature.
A Google search for the English-language keywords seen here (archived here) on the official website of Ukraine's president did yield results discussing Iran and North Korea as Russia's allies. However, none of these pages contained a formal declaration of war, either.
Broad searches in Ukrainian on the president's site via Google led to no results, but irrelevant results did appear when the search was archived (here ) -- a phenomenon Lead Stories cannot explain. The search also did not work on google.com.ua. Removing "Iran" and "North Korea" from the Ukrainian search on google.com.ua, however, led to results, though also not relevant for this fact check.
Lead Stories contacted the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on October 17, 2024, for a response about the claim that he had declared war on Iran and North Korea. If we receive a response, we will update this fact check as appropriate.
The website of the Iranian embassy in Kyiv (archived here) also said nothing about entering into open armed conflict with Ukraine. Had this been the case, the embassy would have likely ceased operations in Ukraine.
As for North Korea, Ukraine severed diplomatic ties with this country back in July 2022 over Pyongyang's decision to recognize the "independence" of the Russian-occupied territories of eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, according to an official statement (archived here) from the Ukrainian foreign ministry.
As of October 17, 2024, the website of the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (archived here), as translated by Google Translate, said nothing about a state of war with Ukraine.
A search across Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) also produced zero reports about Zelenskyy declaring war on Iran and North Korea.
What did Zelenskyy say?
The post that is the focus of this fact check was published on the day of Zelenskyy's October 16, 2024, address to the Verkhovna Rada (archived here). In that speech, which outlined his "victory plan" for Ukraine against Russia, he said:
The coalition of criminals along with Putin now includes North Korea - the Kim family, which keeps more than 20 million Korean people in slavery.Our intelligence records not only the transfer of weapons from North Korea to Russia, but also the transfer of people.Those are workers for Russian factories - instead of Russian citizens killed in the war. And personnel for the Russian army. And this is a fact.In fact, this is the participation of one more state in the war against Ukraine on the side of Russia.Everyone sees the Iranian regime's assistance to Putin.
(An official English translation of the speech can be read here.)
Zelenskyy had made similar statements before.
On October 14, 2024, he mentioned (archived here) the "actual involvement of North Korea" in the war against Ukraine.
On September 23, 2024, Zelenskyy said (archived here):
Russia has no legitimate reason, none at all, for making Iran and North Korea de facto accomplices in its criminal war in Europe--with their weapons, killing us, killing Ukrainians, and helping Putin steal our land from our people.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of the claims about Volodymyr Zelenskyy can be found here. Our fact checks concerning claims about the Russian-Ukrainian war are here.
