Darlene Superville and Aamer Madhani
Aboard Air Force One: Donald Trump says national security 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 the US president 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 north-western Novgorod region that the Russian defence systems were able to defeat.
Lavrov also criticised Kyiv for launching the attack during a moment of intensive discussions to end the war, adding that Moscow would review its negotiating position as a result.
The allegation came just a day after Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Florida for talks with Trump on the US administration’s still-evolving 20-point plan aimed at ending the war, and the Ukrainian president quickly denied it.
“I don’t believe that strike happened,” Trump said as he travelled back to Washington on Sunday after spending two weeks at his home in Florida.
“There is something that happened fairly nearby, but had nothing to do with this.”
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 said last Monday that Putin had also raised the matter during a phone call he had with the Russian leader earlier that day. Trump said he was “very angry” about the accusation.
By Wednesday, Trump appeared to be playing down 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” during a time 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 showed irritation with both Zelensky and Putin as he tries to mediate an end to a conflict he boasted on the campaign trail that he could end in one day.
Trump and Zelensky said last week they made progress in their talks at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on a 20-point peace plan.
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.
AP, Reuters
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