A viral image claims that 18 prominent U.S. politicians received kickback payments from the Ukrainian government. The information was supposedly released by “Ukrainian officials” and indicates that the politicians received anywhere from $17 million to $92 million in exchange for backing continued U.S. support for Ukraine.
The claim is false: The information in the post was not released by Ukrainian officials, and there is no evidence that U.S. politicians have received “kickback” payments from Ukraine.
The earliest version of the post identified by The Dispatch Fact Check first appeared on a Thai-language website on October 3, 2023. By early November 2023, the image began spreading more widely on popular social media sites including X. The original post links to a Russian video site featuring an episode of Redacted, an online news channel run by former Fox & Friends co-host Clayton Morris that regularly spreads anti-Ukraine conspiracy theories. While the video by Redacted does discuss U.S. financial support for Ukraine, it does not include the kickback payment information included in the image. A search of news articles from the period also shows no reports of payment information released by Ukrainian officials.
“It’s absolutely nonsensical,” Ian Garner, an assistant professor at the Pilecki Institute—a Polish governmental research institution—and expert in Russian propaganda, told The Dispatch Fact Check when asked whether the information was accurate. “There’s no credible sources whatsoever, anywhere, in any contexts that show that Ukraine is making these sorts of payments.”
The image’s proliferation tracks closely with how Russian propaganda often spreads online. According to Garner, these kinds of images, even when they are evidently false to most observers, create an impression among ordinary people that other ordinary people hold a particular view. “They create the impression that there are shared values, a shared disbelief in something. And that is very powerful when you’re just trying to disrupt a community, to create divisions within another country, as is happening as Russia spreads material into America.”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. has appropriated about $175 billion to aid the war effort through five congressional acts, including appproximately $61.4 billion in military assistance.
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