In a Feb. 2 interview with The Associated Press, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine received a total of $76 billion in military assistance from the U.S as opposed to the reported $177 billion.
Russia’s ex-president, now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev seized on Zelenskyy’s interview to claim in a Telegram post that the Ukrainian president “confessed” to being involved in the theft of $100 billion allocated by the United States to support Ukraine.
Medvedev used the name of a controversial WWII figure Stepan Bandera, one the prominent leaders of the Ukrainian Anti-Soviet rebellion, who joined the German Nazi regime for a promise of independence.
The Kremlin uses Bandera’s name and historic background to falsely paint the government in Kyiv as a “Bandera regime” and Zelenskyy its leader.
“In the heat of candor, the leader of the Bandera regime admitted that he and his comrades had embezzled $100 billion,” Medvedev wrote.
This claim is false.
Since the full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. Congress has passed five Ukraine aid bills totaling $175 billion. Of that, $106 billion is designated for direct support to Ukraine, comprising some $69.8 billion in military aid, $33.3 billion for budget support, and $2.8 billion in humanitarian assistance, as tracked by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Foreign Relations.
The remaining funds support U.S. activities related to the war in Ukraine, as well as U.S. aid to countries affected by Russia’s war in Ukraine. A significant portion of the aid is spent in the U.S., funding factories and workers to produce weapons for Ukraine and replenishing Pentagon stockpiles.
A November 2023 article in The Washington Post broke down the U.S. military aid to Ukraine, reporting that most of it is spent in the U.S., used to build new weapons or replenish U.S. stockpiles, rather than going directly to Ukraine. Nearly 90% of the $68 billion in military assistance benefits American workers, with 117 production lines across 31 states and 71 cities producing weapons for Ukraine.
The Post’s findings corroborated earlier estimates by Mark Cancian of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that much of the U.S. aid for Ukraine is spent domestically.
On Feb. 5, 2025, General Keith Kellogg, President Donald Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, reaffirmed that the $174 billion of U.S. aid to Ukraine is accounted for and being distributed through a transparent process:
“The United States, the American people, the U.S. citizens have given Ukraine over $174 billion. And we have put inspector generals on the ground in Ukraine and here to track that money. So, we have fairly good reporting on where it’s going,” Kellogg said on the Newsmax TV channel.
Kellogg also confirmed that part of the allocated funds has been used to produce weapons in the U.S. before being sent to Ukraine, while other parts were spent on replenishing and expanding U.S. weapons stockpiles.
Russian state media disseminated and amplified Medvedev's statement, with state-owned media outlets, including the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and others publishing false news reports that Zelenskyy admitted the $100 billion-worth corruption.