Trump says Ukraine did not target Putin residence in drone strike
The comments appeared to counter the concerns the US president voiced over the allegations last week.
US president Donald Trump has said American officials determined that Ukraine did not target a residence belonging to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a drone attack last week.
Mr Trump’s comments disputed Kremlin claims that the US leader had initially greeted with deep concern.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov last week said Ukraine launched a wave of drones at Mr Putin’s state residence in the north-western Novgorod region that Russian defence systems were able to defeat.
Mr 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 Zelensky had travelled to Florida for talks with Mr Trump on the US administration’s still-evolving 20-point plan aimed at ending the war. Mr Zelensky quickly denied the Kremlin allegation.
Mr Trump said that “something happened nearby” Mr Putin’s residence but that Americans officials did not find the Russian president’s residence was targeted.
“I don’t believe that strike happened,” Mr Trump told reporters as he travelled back to Washington on Sunday after spending two weeks at his home in Florida.
“We don’t believe that happened, now that we’ve been able to check.”
Mr 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 the US leader, at least initially, had appeared to take the Russian allegations at face value. He told reporters last Monday that Mr Putin had also raised the matter during a phone he had with the Russian leader earlier that day.
And Mr Trump said he was “very angry” about the accusation.
By Wednesday, Mr 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 Mr Putin for choosing “lies, hatred, and death” at a moment that Mr 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 Mr Zelensky and Mr 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 Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky said last week they made progress in their talks at Mar-a-Lago.
But Mr 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.
