RFK Jr's Ukraine Narrative Challenged by Sean Hannity

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was challenged by Fox News host Sean Hannity over his assertion that the United States had been "pushing Ukraine into the war [with Russia]."

Kennedy, who is running for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, said the Biden administration "want war with Russia" during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday.

Polling indicates President Joe Biden has a commanding lead over the fringe candidates, such as Kennedy, who are challenging him to be the Democrats' White House candidate in 2024. Kennedy, nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, began his activist career as an environmental campaigner before becoming a noted vaccine sceptic and opponent of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

On the show Hannity said: "So Ukraine, to appease Putin who I think is evil, they've already given up Crimea, it was annexed. Now they have to give up the Donbas area [of eastern Ukraine]?"

Kennedy shot back, commenting: "Because of our pushing Ukraine into the war, on two occasions."

In response Hannity asked: "We pushed them into it or did Putin invade them?"

The Democratic presidential hopeful replied: "Let me answer your question. In 2019 France, Germany and Russia all agreed to the Minsk accords. That year [Volodymyr] Zelensky ran for president, he was a comedian, he had no political experience. Why did he win? Because he ran on one issue—signing the Minsk accords. As soon as he got in there Victoria Nuland and the White House told him he couldn't do it.

"Then Putin sends 40,000 troops in, that's not enough to conquer the country, clearly he wanted us ... somebody to come to the negotiating table. Zelensky came to the negotiating table, signed a new agreement, that was the Minsk accords II in 2022 and that would have allowed Donbas and Luhansk to remain as part of Ukraine. Putin signed it, Zelensky initialed it and Putin in good faith began withdrawing troops from the Ukraine. What happened? We sent [former British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson over there to torpedo it because we don't want peace, we want war with Russia."

Nuland was U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2013 to 2017, during which time she was heavily involved with Ukraine policy. In 2014 pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by street protests, leading Russia to seize Crimea and intervene military in the east of Ukraine. Currently Nuland works as under secretary of state for political affairs at the State Department.

A video of the exchange was posted on Twitter by the Acyn account, which shares U.S. politics clips, where it attracted more than 1.9 million views.

The two Minsk accords designed to stop fighting in eastern Ukraine were signed in September 2014 and February 2015. While they did reduce fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists, the accords never stopped the violence entirely and Putin announced they "no longer exist" before Moscow's full scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

The initial Russian invasion force consisted of around 190,000 troops, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank, and at no point did Putin begin "withdrawing troops" except in response to battlefield reverses, as happened north of Kyiv in March and April of 2022.

Speaking to Newsweek, a spokesperson for Kennedy clarified his comments on the Minsk accords and Putin's alleged withdrawal of troops.

They said: "He meant the 2014 and 2015 agreements. The troop withdrawal he mentioned was indeed that of April 2022. The official reason given in the Western press was military setbacks. In fact, the Russians initiated the withdrawal as part of a tentative agreement with Zelensky, before Boris Johnson scuttled the agreement."

No evidence was provided to support the claim Johnson blocked a peace agreement, and the claim that Russia withdrew its forces from Kyiv due to an agreement with Zelensky is widely disputed by political and military experts.

Kennedy's comments sparked an angry response from Ostap Yarysh, a journalist who works for the Ukrainian service of Voice of America.

He tweeted: "NONE of what Kennedy says here is true. Zelensky didn't run on the Minsk accords platform, he didn't sign Minsk-2 (this was in 2015 under entirely different circumstances), Putin never withdrew. Just a bunch of random numbers and claims that have nothing to do with reality.

"To anyone from Ukraine or those who know the context, this sounds simply ridiculous. Dates, names, documents... Not a single thing is true. Seems that Kennedy once heard something, then mixed it up, invented a couple of facts himself, and came up with a completely different story."

Speaking to Newsweek, Kyle Walter, head of research at Logically, which aims to combat disinformation online, said Kennedy has been "pretty much directly sharing Russian propaganda and disinformation narratives."

He contrasted this with former President Donald Trump who "is primarily focused on looking like a good negotiator so he's presenting a case which makes more sense in terms of trying to get concessions out of either side."

Update 7/27/23, 10:15 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with comment from the Kennedy campaign.