Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky denies drone attack on Putin residence after Trump says it angered him – UK Times

US president Donald Trump said his conversation with Vladimir Putin on Monday was productive.

“We have a couple of issues that we’re going to get resolved, hopefully, and if we get them resolved, you’re going to have peace,” he said.

Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday a bilateral agreement had been outlined with Trump on security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump said they were only 95 per cent ready and Zelensky said on Monday he had sought a 50-year security deal.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, in a wide-ranging interview with state news agency RIA published late on Monday, said Ukraine and Western countries had to come to terms with the fact that Russia held the initiative on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“Our principled position remains unchanged. The strategic initiative rests wholly with the Russian army,” Lavrov said.

Trump said he expected European countries to “take over a big part” of the security efforts in Ukraine with US backing. Any such arrangement would be complicated, however, as Russia has said any foreign troop deployment in Ukraine would be unacceptable.

Zelensky told Fox News in an interview that aired late on Monday that Ukraine could not win the war without US support and that he did not trust Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t trust Putin and he doesn’t want success for Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

Earlier on Monday, the Ukrainian president said two main issues in the 20-point peace proposal remained to be resolved: control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which is in Russian hands, and the fate of the Donbas area.

Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.

Russia has signalled a more hardline approach towards ending its war with Ukraine.

This comes as Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine had tried to attack Vladimir Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region west of Moscow earlier this week with 91 long-range drones, which were all destroyed by Russian air defences.

No one was injured and there was no damage, he said in comments reported by Russian media.

“Such reckless actions will not go unanswered,” Lavrov said in a statement, describing the attack as “state terrorism” and adding that targets had already been selected for retaliatory strikes by Russia’s armed forces.

Reuters could not independently verify Lavrov’s comments. Neither Lavrov nor any other Russian officials offered any evidence for the attack assertions. It was not clear where Putin was at the time.

Lavrov said the attack took place during negotiations about a possible peace deal, and said Russia would review its negotiating stance but not quit the negotiations.

Denying Ukraine had planned such an attack, Zelensky accused Russia of preparing the ground to strike government buildings in Kyiv.”It is clear that we had a meeting with Trump yesterday, and it is clear that for the Russians, if there is no scandal between us and America, and we are making progress.

For them it is a failure, because they do not want to end this war,” Zelensky told reporters via WhatsApp.

He added: “I am sure they are simply preparing the ground for strikes, probably on the capital, probably on government buildings.”

Russia accused Ukraine on Monday of trying to attack president Vladimir Putin’s residence and vowed retaliation, providing no evidence for a claim Kyiv dismissed as baseless and aimed at derailing arduous peace talks.

The angry exchanges between the warring neighbours on Monday including a statement by Russia that it was reviewing its stance in negotiations in response to the attack dealt a new blow to prospects for peace in Ukraine.

US president Donald Trump said Putin had told him about the alleged attack in a phone call on Monday morning, which had angered him.

Still, Trump repeated his belief that a peace deal may be near.”It’s one thing to be offensive,” Trump told reporters.

“It’s another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that. And I learned about it from President Putin today. I was very angry about it.”

On Sunday, Trump met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Florida and the US president said they were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to an agreement to end the war, although “thorny” territorial issues remained.

On Monday, Putin struck a defiant tone, telling his army to press on with a campaign to take full control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. The Kremlin repeated demands for Kyiv to pull its forces out of the last part of the Donbas area that they still hold in eastern Ukraine.

Putin told Trump in Monday’s phone call that Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022, was reviewing its stance following the reported drone attack, an aide said. Zelensky dismissed Russia’s allegation as “a complete fabrication” and the Kremlin’s own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war.

After the call with Putin, Trump told reporters outside his home in Palm Beach, Florida, that he had no further information about the alleged attack.

“I don’t like it, it’s not good,” Trump said. Asked if US intelligence agencies had evidence of such an attack, Trump said: “We’ll find out.”

President Vladimir Putin has formally enacted changes granting Russia the unilateral right to ignore judgments issued by foreign and international courts in criminal cases.

This controversial decision comes as Ukrainian and European nations continue their concerted efforts to impose penalties on Moscow for its ongoing actions in Ukraine.

Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine looked fragile on Monday as Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at Russian “lies” about a drone attack on one of Vladimir Putin’s residences, accusing the latter of trying to undermine diplomatic efforts.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov alleged that Ukraine had launched 91 long-range drones at the forest retreat on Lake Valdai overnight, but all had been shot down with no damage reported.

Mr Zelensky dismissed the claim as “lies” that he said were cynically intended to “undermine diplomacy and justify dragging out the war”.

The Independent’s James C. Reynolds has this story:

Russia will respond to what it said was an attempted Ukrainian attack on President Vladimir Putin’s residence, TASS state news agency cited Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on Tuesday.

“There will be a response for this,” TASS cited Zakharova as telling Russia’s public broadcaster.

Moscow did not provide evidence to support its assertions that Ukraine tried to attack Putin’s residence and Kyiv dismissed Russia’s claims as baseless and designed to undermine peace negotiations.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview published late on Monday, said the West must understand that Russia holds the strategic initiative in Ukraine as discussions move forward on a possible settlement.

Lavrov told RIA news agency that the West had to come to terms with the territorial realities on the ground nearly four years after the launch of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which it describes as a “Special Military Operation”.

He said the United States now supported the notion, which had become clear to all, that with the expiry of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s mandate, a new election was needed.

Lavrov also again stressed that a settlement required an end to any notion of a NATO presence in Ukraine and that the country had to adopt a neutral, non-aligned status.