Photo: Screenshot from the video
The post we are fact-checking has just one sentence that is out of context. That leads to misinterpreting the press-conference of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. From the overall answer of Zelenskyy of the question posed by the ABC News reporter – What would you say to the Americans who think that America is providing too much assistance to Ukraine – it is clear that he is talking about a hypothetical situation in which Ukraine is losing the war and Russia is afterwards performing military attacks on the Baltic countries, members of NATO, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
We are fact-checking a post (screenshot here) published on the social network Facebook that claims that the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said that the USA will have to send its sons and daughters to fight and die for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy: The USA will have to send its sons and daughters to fight and die for Ukraine, states the Facebook post accompanied by a 19-second video material.
The video in the post we are fact-checking is extracted from a two-hour cast live at a press-conference marking the anniversary of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. In the video, Zelenskyy is explaining that if Russia was to attack a NATO Member-State – an US ally – then the USA would probably have to send soldiers to protect that country. He does not suggest that the Americans would have to fight for Ukraine.
The whole context of the press-conference clip reveals that the Ukrainian President is talking about a hypothetical situation in which Russia attacks a NATO Member-State, not that he is calling upon the Americans to fight in Ukraine. Having viewed the video, one can see that Zelenskyy is answering a question (around 1:37 hour of the video) revealing his message to the Americans who believe that the USA is providing too much assistance to Ukraine. First, Zelenskyy is thanking the Americans for their ongoing support, and then he talks about what could happen if Ukraine was to lose the war:
The US is never going to give up on the NATO Member-States. If it happens so that Ukraine, due to various opinions and weakening, depleting of assistance, loses, then Russia is going to Baltic States, NATO Member-States, and then the US will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending theirs to war. And they will have to fight. Because it’s NATO that we are talking about, and they will be dying, God forbid, because it’s a horrible thing. (around 1:40 hour of the video).
From the entire answer of Zelenskyy to the question of the reporter of ABC News – what would he say to the Americans who believe that America is providing too much assistance to Ukraine – one can clearly see that he is predicting a hypothetical situation in which Ukraine is losing the war, while Russia, after that, is attacking the Baltic States, NATO Member-States. In such a scenario, Article 5 of the North-Atlantic Treaty would apply according to which the attack of one NATO Member-State is considered an attack of all member states, and then all countries send, if necessary, military assistance for the attacked member states.
We conclude that the post we are fact-checking is out of context. Only one sentence has been extracted thereby allowing misinterpretation of the press-conference of the Ukrainian President on the occasion of marking the anniversary of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. In actual fact, a fragment was cut from the Zelenskyy’s statement (answer to the question of the reporter) when he was talking about a hypothetical situation, thereby intentionally manipulating and creating a false public image. Therefore, we assess this post as a post outside of context.
