In the struggle for the favor of American President Donald Trump, the Kremlin on Tuesday did not back up its story of a Ukrainian drone attack on “a residence” of Vladimir Putin with facts, but spiced it up with even sharper rhetoric.
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian ruler, spoke of a “terrorist attack” that was directed “not only against President Putin personally,” but “also against Trump” and his efforts to achieve a peaceful solution to the “Ukrainian conflict.”
The story of the “attempted attack” on Putin’s residence in the Valdai ridge between Moscow and Saint Petersburg arose on Monday evening against the background of Trump’s meeting with the Ukrainian president, which was quite harmonious by Ukrainian-American standards and which took place on Sunday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.
Volodymyr Zelensky said afterwards that the US President had promised Ukraine “strong security guarantees” for a period of 15 years and a “development package”. Although Trump identified one or two “very sensitive” issues before a hypothetical end to the war and credited Putin with wanting Ukraine to “succeed,” this outcome was not in Moscow’s favor.
Lavrov’s move seemed improvised
In this situation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the press about a “terrorist attack” by Ukrainians on a “residence in the Novgorod region” on Monday night with “91 long-range drones,” all of which were “destroyed.”
There was no information about injuries or damage, Lavrov said, without providing any evidence or saying whether Putin was in the residence during the alleged attack. Along with Novo-Ogaryovo west of Moscow, it is said to be Putin’s main place of residence; According to exiled Russian media, Putin’s partner Alina Kabaeva lives in the Valdaj residence with their two sons, Ivan, born in 2015, and Vladimir, born in 2019.
Lavrov’s move seemed improvised; initially not even the official reports were coordinated: Russia’s Defense Ministry had also mentioned the number of 91 drones on Monday, but it said that only 41 of them were shot down over the Novgorod region, the rest over the Bryansk and Smolensk regions. Only later were all of the alleged shootings considered to be “a defense against a terrorist attack” on the residence.
Nothing was reported from the town of Valdaj or the area surrounding the residence that would have confirmed an attack. Such an attack would be the second on a Putin residence after a drone attack on the Moscow Kremlin in May 2023, for which Kiev had not accepted responsibility.
Lavrov went on to say that since Kiev had “finally moved to the policy of state terror,” “Russia’s negotiating positions were now being revised.” In reality, at least since Putin’s television appearance on December 19th, the demand for the defenders to vacate all Ukrainian territories annexed to Moscow and for international recognition of the annexations of 2014 and 2022 has been the negotiating line. This goes far beyond Trump’s initial negotiation draft of 28 points.
This envisaged an evacuation of the Donbas areas of Luhansk and Donetsk and a freezing of the front in the southern areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. In the 20-point plan that Zelensky presented on Christmas Eve as a result of negotiations with the Americans, however, the front line is frozen in all areas. Moscow is reluctant to show such consideration for Ukrainians and Europeans.
Far more deaths than last year
Zelensky quickly dismissed Lavrov’s story as a “new lie” from Russia; the Ukrainian president referred to the meeting in Florida and said that “if there is no scandal for us with America, but progress, it is a fiasco for the Russians,” the latter looking for reasons to continue the war.
Putin himself leaves no doubt that he wants this. On Saturday evening, with a view to the upcoming Trump-Zelensky summit, he held another meeting with his military officers, had battle successes reported – disputed by the Ukrainians and independent observers – and declared that “judging by the pace we can observe at the front, our interest in withdrawing the Ukrainian armed forces from the areas they currently occupy is practically zero.” That was a variation of his old formula: if Russia doesn’t achieve its war goals through negotiations, then it will do so militarily.
Putin doesn’t talk about the downside of this tactic: In order to build up more pressure in the negotiations, the Russian military is sacrificing more and more fighters. While Trump and Putin resumed and expanded their contacts this year, the BBC’s Russian service and the Mediasona portal, which have been collecting official reports of Russians killed in Ukraine, newspaper articles and social media posts since the 2022 attack, counted 40 percent more such obituaries than in the same period last year. In total, the journalists have already counted almost 160,000 names and always add that experts assume that the real number of deaths is likely to be much higher.
On Monday evening, after another phone call between his boss and Trump, Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy advisor, proudly took stock of the contacts over the past year, speaking of ten such conversations, the meeting in Alaska in August and six meetings with Trump’s envoys. Apparently Moscow now wants Trump to feel even more or more closely connected to Putin, since they are both targets of hostile adversaries.
Trump says he’s angry
In his charm offensive against Trump, Putin repeatedly used the gun attack on the then presidential candidate in July 2024 and thus probably made an impression on Trump. What is always left out is that, according to Ukrainian and American information, several Russian assassination attempts against Zelensky have failed.
Ushakov now also reported that Putin had asked Trump about the “terrorist attack” on the residence. Ushakov said they would have to react harshly, and Trump was “shocked by the announcement,” “literally outraged. He said he couldn’t even imagine such crazy actions.” Undoubtedly, this will influence American work with Zelensky, “to whom, as Trump himself said, thank God the current government did not give tomahawks,” Putin’s adviser quoted the US President as saying.
Trump himself was asked by journalists about the alleged attack on Monday. Putin told him this when he called him to inform him about the conversation with Zelensky, he said. He, Trump, is “very angry” about it. Trump also referred to the fact that he had stopped a delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which could reach deep into Russian territory, to Ukraine a few months ago: “I didn’t want that,” he said. You are in a delicate phase. It’s one thing to be “offensive” – that’s what Russia is too. “But it’s different to attack your house,” he said of Putin’s residence. “It’s not the right time for something like this.”
Trump had already emphasized his good relationship with Putin in Zelensky’s presence on Sunday. They went through the “Russia Hoax” together, he said, referring to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaign. The story repeatedly serves him to portray himself and Putin as outsiders on the world stage who are now coming together for the good of the world. Asked Monday about evidence of the attack on Putin, Trump said they would “find out.” It is possible that there was no attack at all. But he believes Putin.
Worth a look
