Aboard Air Force One: President Donald Trump Sunday told reporters that US officials have determined that Ukraine did not target a residence belonging to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone attack last week, disputing Kremlin claims that Trump had initially greeted with deep concern.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week said Ukraine launched a wave of drones at Putin’s state residence in the northwestern Novgorod region that the Russian defence systems were able to defeat. Lavrov also criticised Kyiv for launching the attack at a moment of intensive negotiations to end the war.
The allegation came just a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had travelled to Florida for talks with Trump on the US administration’s still-evolving 20-point plan aimed at ending the war. Zelenskyy quickly denied the Kremlin’s allegation.
Trump said that “something happened nearby” Putin’s residence, but that American officials didn’t find that the Russian president’s residence was targeted.
“I don’t believe that strike happened, Trump told reporters as he travelled back to Washington Sunday after spending two weeks at his home in Florida. “We don’t believe that happened, now that we’ve been able to check.”
Trump addressed the US determination after European officials argued that the Russian claim was nothing more than an effort by Moscow to undermine the peace effort.
But Trump, at least initially, had appeared to take the Russian allegations at face value. He told reporters last Monday that Putin had also raised the matter during a phone call he had with the Russian leader earlier that day. And Trump said he was “very angry” about the accusation.
By Wednesday, Trump appeared to be downplaying the Russian claim. He posted a link to a New York Post editorial on his social media platform that raised doubt about the Russian allegation. The editorial lambasted Putin for choosing lies, hatred, and death” at a moment that Trump has claimed is “closer than ever before” to moving the two sides to a deal to end the war.
The US president has struggled to fulfil a pledge to quickly end the war in Ukraine and has shown irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin as he tried to mediate an end to a conflict he boasted on the campaign trail that he could end in one day.
Both Trump and Zelenskyy said last week they made progress in their talks at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
But Putin has shown little interest in ending the war until all of Russia’s objectives are met, including winning control of all Ukrainian territory in the key industrial Donbas region and imposing severe restrictions on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military and the type of weaponry it can possess.
