On June 1, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump was rumored to have strongly rebuked Ukraine after the country reportedly hit Russian aircraft with drones. Per a series of viral posts on X and Facebook, Trump allegedly called for Ukraine to compensate Russia for the destroyed aircraft.
The posts claimed Trump also said:
They were just sitting there, not bothering anyone. If the Ukrainians had shot them down during a combat mission, that would be a different matter. But they were just sitting there. It's like hitting someone who's already down.
(Snopes reader)
Trump never made the above statement, nor did he call on Ukraine to compensate Russia for destroyed aircraft. We found no evidence in his publicized statements, in the news media or on his social media accounts to corroborate the claim. As such, it is an incorrect attribution.
We reached out to the White House for comment on whether Trump made the above statement and will update this story if we get more information.
We looked for examples of Trump's comments to the media by searching for parts of the above quote on Google News. We also looked through the White House's transcripts for any similar speeches or statements Trump made to the news media. If Trump had said this in public it would have been widely covered by news media publications.
There is also no evidence of such a statement on Trump's social media accounts. Roll Call's archive of Trump's social media on X and TruthSocial found no posts resembling the various forms of the passage, nor did searching for sections of the quote on his X profile or on Trump's Truth, another website dedicated to archiving his Truth Social posts.
In June 2025, Ukraine announced it had launched a series of drone strikes on Russian warplanes, with Russia confirming attacks in five regions. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were headed to Istanbul before the drone strikes took place. Trump had no immediate response to the attack and has not commented as of this writing.