ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — U.S. officials have determined that last week’s drone strike in Ukraine did not target Russian President Vladimir Putin’s home, President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday, rebutting the Kremlin’s assertion that Trump initially expressed deep concern.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Ukraine launched a wave of drones at Putin’s official residence in the northwest Novgorod region but that Russian defense systems were able to defeat them. Lavrov also criticized Kiev for launching the attack amid intense negotiations to end the war.
The accusation came just a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Florida to hold talks with Trump about the 20-point plan the U.S. government is still working on to end the war, but Zelensky quickly denied it.
Trump said there was “something going on near Putin’s residence,” but that U.S. officials were not aware of an attack on the Russian president’s residence.
“I don’t believe a strike happened,” Trump told reporters on Sunday as he returned to Washington after two weeks at his home in Florida. “Now that we’ve been able to inspect, we don’t believe this happened.”
Trump spoke of the U.S. decision after European officials dismissed Russia’s claims as nothing more than an effort by Moscow to undermine peace efforts.
But at least initially, Trump seemed to accept the Russia accusations at face value. He told reporters last Monday that Putin had also raised the matter during a phone call with the Russian leader earlier in the day. Trump said he was “very angry” about the accusation.
By Wednesday, Trump appeared to downplay the Russia claims. He posted a link on his social media platform to a New York Post editorial that cast doubt on the Russia allegations. The editorial lambasted Putin for choosing “lies, hatred and death” at a moment when Trump claimed he was “closer than ever” to an agreement to end the war.
The U.S. president has struggled to fulfill his promise to quickly end the war in Ukraine and has shown anger with Zelensky and Putin as he tried to mediate an end to a conflict that he boasted on the campaign trail that he could one day end.
Both Trump and Zelensky said last week that they were making progress in talks on a 20-point peace plan at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
But Putin has little interest in ending the war until all of Russia’s goals are achieved, including winning control of all Ukrainian territory in the key industrial Donbass region and imposing strict limits on the size of Ukraine’s postwar army and the types of weapons it can possess.
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Madani reported from Washington.
