KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Donald Trump this week falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war that has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, causing outrage and alarm in a country that has spent nearly three years fighting back a much larger Russian military.

Monday marks the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war — which the Kremlin once characterized as a “special military operation” to discipline an insubordinate neighbor — has sprawled across hundreds of miles of front lines,