Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy react to his August 2025 meeting at the White House by suggesting that Donald Trump rejects a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, believing it would hurt his chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize? No, that's not true: Official government webpages of the Ukrainian president don't contain such a statement. Lead Stories could not find credible reporting confirming this claim.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok, where it was posted on August 21, 2025, under the caption that read:
Zelenskyy's response to Trump#tiktok #foryou #fyp #usa #celebrity
In the video, Zelenskyy appeared to be saying the following in English:
Trump doesn't really want me to cease fire with Putin. He thinks he won't get the Nobel Peace Prize once there is a ceasefire. To be honest, when I talked to him in the White House, I totally felt it. He doesn't care how many people die in war every day. [All] he could think about was that peace medal. In his eyes, war is just a tool to gain profits. As long as Putin and I keep fighting, the world will remember that he is mediating the contradiction...
This is what the opening frame of the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: screenshot of a video by @celebinsights3 on TikTok.com)
This clip, implying that it documented Zelenskyy's authentic comments on his conversation with Trump, started to circulate on social media days after a series of meetings between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States and European leaders (archived here) concluded in Washington, D.C., in mid-August 2025.
Lead Stories manually reviewed Zelenskyy's speeches for the period between Donald Trump's second inauguration on January 20, 2025 (archived here), and this writing, and found several close matches that showed the Ukrainian president in the same outfit and the same setting, filmed from roughly the same angle. However, none of those recordings contained the words attributed to Zelenskyy on TikTok.
One video (archived here) was published on April 4, 2025, on his presidential website, under the title:
Every Russian Promise Ends with Missiles or Drones, Bombs or Artillery; Diplomacy Means Nothing to Them - Address by the President
Contrary to the claim, the Ukrainian president didn't mention Trump by name. Instead, he said:
These strikes cannot be accidental - the Russians know exactly that these are energy facilities and that such facilities should be protected from any attacks under what Russia itself promised to the American side. Every Russian promise ends with missiles or drones, bombs or artillery. Diplomacy means nothing to them. And that's why pressure is needed - sufficient pressure on Russia so they feel the consequences of every lie of theirs, every strike, every single day they take lives and prolong the war. A ceasefire could have already been reached, and it is Putin who rejects it; it is Moscow that has refused a ceasefire since March 11; and it is they, in Russia, who want this war. And it's obvious that Russia won't be forced into peace just by talks or expectations. I'm grateful to everyone in the world whose strength helps diplomacy and all efforts for a just peace become effective. We count on America, on Europe, on other partners - we count on their ability to put pressure on the sole cause of this war - namely, Russia's desire to destroy and kill.
Another match was a March 28, 2025, address (archived here; a video is available here and archived here). In it, Zelenskyy didn't refer to his American counterpart by name, either. Rather, the speech contained an earlier repetition of the same point concerning the ceasefire:
(Source: screenshot of the president.gov.ua website)
In both instances, one of the ceiling lights appears behind Zelenskyy's left ear, and he wears a black shirt with a visible seam on one side and the Ukrainian national trident just below the emblem. Yet, the white trident never gets fully visible as it is in the clip on TikTok.
In other instances, when the national emblem is not partially cut off from the frame -- for example, here (archived here) and here (archived here) -- Zelenskyy wears a slightly different outfit that lacks the characteristic seam. Automatically generated transcripts on YouTube translated to English by Chrome didn't show anything close to what the video on TikTok attributed to the Ukrainian president.
Searches for keywords from the purported speech attributed to Zelenskyy across news websites on Google (archived here) and Yahoo (archived here) didn't yield any confirmation that the Ukrainian president actually released such a recording.
A closer look at the variation of the video that went viral on social media revealed a slight unnatural blur around Zelenskyy's mouth as he spoke, suggesting that the clip in question was likely to have been produced by using deepfake technology.
