President Donald Trump’s claim that Ukraine is “militarily defeated” appears to have mixed up Ukraine with Iran, after he described a destroyed navy of “159 ships” while answering a question about whether the Ukraine war or the Iran conflict could end sooner.
The remark came Wednesday in the Oval Office after Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a call that covered both Ukraine and Iran. Reuters reported that Trump said he discussed “a little bit of a ceasefire” in Ukraine with Putin, after the Kremlin said the Russian leader proposed a temporary pause around Russia’s May 9 Victory Day commemorations.
Trump said Putin also offered help on Iran’s enriched uranium, but that he told Putin he would “much rather have you be involved with ending the war with Ukraine.”
Asked by CNN which conflict could wrap up first, Trump replied, “I think Ukraine militarily they’re defeated,” then pointed to naval losses: “Their navy — they had 159 ships, every ship right now is underwater, typically that’s pretty good.”
The problem is that the 159-ship claim aligns with Trump’s recent public framing of Iran’s naval losses, not Ukraine’s military position.
Ukraine does not have the kind of 159-ship navy Trump described. While it has suffered naval losses, its Black Sea posture has relied heavily on drones, missiles, patrol craft, and asymmetric attacks against Russia’s fleet since Moscow’s 2022 invasion. The line instead tracks the Iran file, where Trump and US officials have repeatedly claimed major damage to Iranian maritime forces during the US-Iran conflict.
The Iran context is central. Reuters reported Wednesday that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen to about seven vessels a day in recent days, compared with 125 to 140 daily passages before the Iran war began on February 28. A US-Iran ceasefire was declared on April 8, but commercial traffic remains limited, and the US Treasury has warned that payments to Iran or the Revolutionary Guards for safe passage could create sanctions exposure even for non-US persons.
The War Zone separately reported that Trump had claimed 159 Iranian ships had been destroyed, while noting that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still has a large number of small vessels.
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