ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday that U.S. officials have determined that Ukraine did not target a residence belonging to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone strike last week, disputing Kremlin claims that Trump had initially met with great concern.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Ukraine had launched a wave of drones at Putin’s state residence in the northwestern region of Novgorod that Russian defense systems were able to defeat. Lavrov also criticized Kyiv for launching the attack at a time of intensive negotiations to end the war.
The allegation came just a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Florida for talks with Trump about the US administration’s evolving 20-point plan to end the war, which Zelenskyy quickly rejected.
Trump said that “something happened near” Putin’s residence but that American officials did not find that the Russian President’s residence was targeted.
“I don’t believe that strike happened,” Trump told reporters as he traveled back to Washington on Sunday after spending two weeks at his Florida home. “We don’t believe it happened, now that we’ve been able to check.”
Trump addressed the United States’ determination after European officials argued that the Russian request was nothing more than an effort by Moscow to undermine the peace effort.
But Trump, at least initially, appeared to take the Russian allegations at face value. He told reporters last Monday that Putin had also raised the issue 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 request. He posted a link to a New York Post editorial on his social media platform that questioned the Russian allegation. The editorial slammed Putin for choosing “lies, hate and death” at a time when Trump claimed he is “closer than ever” to moving the two sides to an agreement to end the war.
The US president has struggled to make good on a promise to quickly end the war in Ukraine and has shown irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin as he tried to broker an end to a conflict he boasted on the campaign trail that could end in a day.
Both Trump and Zelenskyy said they made progress last week in their talks at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on a 20-point peace plan.
But Putin has shown little interest in ending the war until all of Russia’s goals are met, including winning control of all of Ukraine’s territory in the key industrial region of Donbas and imposing severe restrictions on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military and the type of weapons it can wield.
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Madhani reported from Washington.