U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Ukraine was not responsible for an alleged attack on one of President Vladimir Putin’s residences earlier this week, as noted by The Wall Street Journal late Wednesday.
Russia asserts that Ukraine conducted a significant drone operation aimed at Putin’s Valdai residence located in the northwestern Novgorod region between Sunday night and Monday morning. However, Kyiv has rejected these claims, suggesting they are an effort to undermine U.S.-facilitated negotiations aimed at concluding the conflict.
A source within the U.S. government told WSJ that the CIA has concluded no attack actually occurred at Putin’s residence. The source indicated that Ukrainian troops were instead targeting a military site elsewhere in the Novgorod area, well away from Valdai.
According to WSJ, the CIA chose not to comment, and the White House did not offer an immediate response.
In response to the report, Russia’s Defense Ministry declared on Thursday that it had retrieved flight mission data from one of the drones shot down during the alleged attack on Valdai and intended to share this information with U.S. officials.
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his anger to reporters after Putin informed him of the purported Ukrainian attempt to strike his residence.
However, just before WSJ’s report was released, Trump downplayed Russia’s allegations by sharing an editorial from the New York Post on Truth Social, entitled “Putin ‘Attack’ Bluster Shows Russia Is the One Standing in the Way of Peace.”
The editorial contends that Russia is hindering peace efforts and posits that any attack against Putin would be “more than justified” in light of alleged Russian assassination attempts on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry provided its first comprehensive account of the supposed attack on Putin’s Valdai residence, revealing a map that purportedly illustrated the flight paths of over 90 Ukrainian drones, along with video evidence of what they claimed was a downed drone.
The Defense Ministry stated that more than half of the drones were destroyed hundreds of kilometers away from Valdai, in areas near the Ukrainian border that are often targeted by Ukrainian forces. However, they did not explain how they concluded that those drones were headed for Valdai.
Moscow has indicated that it will reassess its negotiation stance in peace talks following the alleged incident, raising suspicions that the event might have been fabricated, possibly to hinder U.S.-led efforts to resolve the conflict at a time when both Trump and Zelensky have indicated that progress was being made.
