President Donald Trump informed reporters on Sunday that U.S. officials have concluded Ukraine did not target a residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone attack last week, an allegation Trump had initially responded to with serious concern.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated last week that Ukraine had launched a drone attack on Putin’s state residence in the northwestern Novgorod region, which Russian defense systems managed to repel. Lavrov also condemned Kyiv for conducting the attack during intensive negotiations to end the war.
The accusation emerged just a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had traveled to Florida for discussions with Trump regarding the U.S. administration’s still-developing peace strategy. Zelenskyy promptly rejected the Kremlin’s claim.
Trump commented that “something occurred in the vicinity” of Putin’s residence, but American officials determined that the Russian president’s residence was not actually targeted.
“I don’t believe that strike occurred,” Trump told reporters while returning to Washington on Sunday following a two-week stay at his Florida home. “We don’t believe it happened, now that we’ve had the opportunity to investigate.”
Trump made the U.S. assessment public after European officials contended that Russia’s claim was merely an attempt by Moscow to sabotage the peace process.
However, Trump had initially seemed to accept the Russian allegations as genuine. He told reporters last Monday that Putin had brought up the issue during a phone conversation with the Russian leader earlier that day, and Trump said he was “very angry” about the accusation.
By Wednesday, Trump seemed to be minimizing the Russian claim. He shared a link to a New York Post editorial on his social media platform that expressed skepticism about Russia’s allegation. The editorial criticized Putin for embracing “lies, hatred, and death” at a time when Trump has asserted the parties are “closer than ever before” to reaching an agreement to end the war.
The U.S. president has struggled to deliver on his promise to end the war in Ukraine and has displayed frustration with both Zelenskyy and Putin as he attempts to mediate a resolution to a conflict he claimed on the campaign trail he could resolve in a single day.
Both Trump and Zelenskyy stated last week that they had made progress during their meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
However, Putin has demonstrated minimal interest in ending the war until all of Russia’s objectives are achieved, including gaining control of all Ukrainian territory in the key industrial Donbas region and enforcing severe limitations on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military and the types of weapons it can maintain.
___
Madhani reported from Washington.