The quote from the US Vice President is made up, just as the mentioned calculations.
A quote allegedly from US Vice President JD Vance is circulating online, in which he predicts that Ukraine will never be able to pay off the families of the fallen Ukrainian soldiers. He claims that the government allegedly already owes $700 billion to the families of 1.7 million fallen soldiers.
The quote that Russian propaganda attributed to Vance is fabricated. We were unable to find any confirmation in any credible Western media that the US Vice President really commented on Ukraine’s ability to make payments to the families of fallen soldiers and voiced such statistics. Moreover, the original source of the so-called quote is the X profile «🇨🇦 Reagan 🇺🇸 Ronald 🇬🇱» with the telling bio «Ban for fact-checking!» and the «parody account» tag. Propagandists often use this tag to avoid taking responsibility for spreading false information: in fact, the author expects that most Internet users will ignore the disclaimer and uncritically spread fake news. This is exactly what happened. Only one publication on this topic has been shared on X more than 190 times.
We should also note the number of 1.7 million dead soldiers mentioned in the «quote». Where did this figure come from? The other day, pro-Kremlin resources announced that Russia had hacked the database of the Ukrainian Forces General Staff, from which they allegedly obtained information about 1.7 million dead and missing Ukrainian soldiers. The Center for Countering Disinformation commented on the absurd news: «Over the years of independence, Ukraine has never had a regular army of 1.7 million people. As of January 2025, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian army consisted of 880,000 people». Meanwhile, according to the General Staff, as of August 20, 2025 the Russian side lost 1,072,700 people killed and wounded.
Russian propaganda is constantly producing new and new fakes about the number of losses in the Ukrainian army. We have already refuted such disinformation in the stories Fake: Ukraine’s Payouts to Families of Fallen Soldiers Reach $130 Billion and Fake: ABC News Reports a Million Ukrainian soldiers Dead and Hundreds of Thousands Wounded.
