The CIA has determined that Ukraine did not target president Vladimir Putin of Russia or one of his residences in an attack this week, according to US officials, rebutting an assertion Mr Putin made in a phone call to US president Donald Trump on Monday.
CIA director John Ratcliffe briefed Mr Trump on the finding, a person familiar with the matter said.
Mr Trump has not directly acknowledged the intelligence, but on Wednesday, he posted on social media a link to a New York Post editorial that blamed Putin for standing in the way of a peace deal with Ukraine and cast doubt on the veracity of his claim that he was the target of an attack.
On Monday, Mr Trump had said he was “very angry” about the purported attack when Mr Putin told him about it.
The CIA declined to comment, and the White House referred questions to Trump’s social media post.
Russia had used the claim to threaten to harden its stance in negotiations as thorny issues already appear to be hampering talks to end the war. But it has not presented any clear-cut evidence of the purported drone attack, which it said was aimed at Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region, a rural part of the country.
Instead, the finding by US intelligence officials, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, aligns with the Ukrainians, who adamantly denied the Russians’ allegations.
In a post on social media, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine called the claim “a complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine, including Kyiv, as well as Russia’s own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war.”
On Monday, even as Mr Trump said he was angry about the purported attack, he conceded that he had no independent confirmation and that it was “possible” it had not happened.
“It’s a delicate period of time,” he said. “This is not the right time. It’s one thing to be offensive because they’re offensive. It’s another thing to attack his house.”
The episode came shortly after Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy met at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club and residence in Florida. The two leaders appeared upbeat Sunday after meeting, though they appeared to make little progress on two of the biggest obstacles to lasting peace: security guarantees for Ukraine against future Russian aggression and Russia’s demands for Ukraine to cede significant amounts of territory.
Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s special envoy, said on Wednesday that he and other senior administration officials had spoken with Rustem Umerov, a top Ukrainian national security official, and other European national security officials about their efforts to end the war.
“We focused on how to move the discussions forward in a practical way on behalf of @POTUS’ peace process, including strengthening security guarantees and developing effective deconfliction mechanisms to help end the war and ensure it does not restart,” he wrote on social media, referring to Mr Trump.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.