Ukraine dwell ticker: Zelenskyj: 2000 Russian assaults in New Year’s week | EUROtoday

With an uncommon handover ceremony, Russia’s efforts to influence American President Donald Trump to take a harder stance in direction of Ukraine entered a brand new spherical on Thursday night. It continues with the story of an alleged Ukrainian drone assault on Vladimir Putin’s residence within the Valdai ridge between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, which was raised final Monday in view of the summit assembly between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which went and not using a scandal.

No sooner had American media reported that the top of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, had knowledgeable Trump on Wednesday that it was not Putin’s residence however a army facility within the Novgorod area that had been the goal of a Ukrainian drone assault on Monday evening. Igor Kostyukov, the top of Russia’s army intelligence company GRU, summoned a consultant of the army attaché to the American embassy in Moscow. Is ügave the diplomat an alleged management aspect one of many 91 drones shot down on the evening in query, in keeping with Russian info and “decipherments” of goal informationthat GRU specialists would have carried out. The information, Kostyukov mentioned, clearly confirmed that the goal of the assault was the presidential residence. The handover will serve to “establish the truth,” concluded the GRU chief.

There is not any reminiscence of such an motion, no less than within the latest previous. It exhibits that Moscow considers its earlier efforts on this affect operation to be insufficient. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, portrayed the alleged assault on Putin as an assault on Trump and his peace efforts, however referred the assault to the army for proof. This was clearly taken abruptly by the story of the assault initially advised by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and solely subsequently adjusted its statements accordingly.

That additionally occurred on Wednesday The presentation of alleged flight paths of the drones and the distribution of recordings of drone particles within the snow weren’t sufficient to win Trump over to the Russian model. The Ministry of Defense introduced a person in entrance of the digital camera who mentioned that he had heard the sound of (anti-aircraft) missiles within the small city of Valdaj close to the residence; However, the impartial portal Moschem Objasnit reported that 14 residents of Valdaj interviewed had not heard any drones or launches and had not acquired any SMS warnings, as they’re normally despatched. This confirms the suspicion that Moscow’s management introduced up the story spontaneously on Monday and should have overestimated Trump’s skill to be influenced.

After the CIA chief’s briefing, the American president shared an op-ed from the New York Post newspaper on his Truth Social community with the headline “Putin’s ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace.” It criticizes the Russian method to claiming that violence in Putin’s neighborhood deserves particular outrage, regardless of fixed assaults on Ukrainian civilians and a number of makes an attempt to kill Zelensky. “Any attack on Putin is more than justified.” On the opposite hand, it’s mentioned that the drone assault “probably never happened”, that “Putin’s entire war is a lie” and that Russia is working towards Trump all around the world.