Eve, here. Showing his longstanding tendency to believe the last person who speaks to him, Trump has gone from accepting President Vladimir Putin’s report that Ukraine targeted Putin’s residence near Valdai in an attempt to assassinate him using more than 90 drones to accepting the CIA’s denial that there was an attack on Ukraine but that the military target was not near Putin’s residence.
Frankly, the fact that Russia feels the need to provide evidence to Trump through the attachment (assuming, charitably, that the evidence gets to Trump uncompromised and that he has the ability to interpret it) shows that it is overindulging in the pretense of negotiating to end the war. President Putin appears to have felt the need to improve Russia’s image with its economic allies, who were not satisfied with the fact of the invasion. He may have even harbored hopes of improving relations and restoring at least some commercial relations. But the administration is unwilling or unable to take even the small step of returning diplomatic property seized from Russia. And Trump has repeatedly re-traded the agreement, first re-trading Alaska, but now apparently backtracking from the 28-point plan to a new version that has not yet been finalized.
Russia would do well to stop this disgrace, especially since the CIA is using it to discredit Putin personally. They need to prosecute the war and determine whether and when the United States or Ukraine will resume talks they recognize as necessary.
Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the new Cold War. He holds a doctorate from MGIMO, which is affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Originally published on his website
Tensions risk spiraling out of control unless President Trump corrects the CIA’s false claim that Ukraine’s recent massive drone attack on Novgorod Oblast was not an attempt to assassinate President Putin.
President Trump retweeted a New York Post editorial from New Year’s Eve that said, “Putin’s ‘attack’ fuss shows Russia is standing in the way of peace,” after CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed him on the agency’s assessment that Ukraine did not attempt to assassinate President Putin. A few days ago, Putin told Trump in a recent phone call that nearly 100 Ukrainian attack drones were intercepted near Putin’s residence in northern Russia on the day Trump hosted Zelensky.
Trump expressed anger when asked about this by reporters, reminding everyone how he had stopped giving Tomahawks to Ukraine, and appearing to imply that this may have saved Putin’s life. Ukraine predictably denied targeting Putin, President Zelenskyy slammed India and other countries, and government officials condemned the attack, although Zelenskyy insisted it did not happen. President Trump now clearly thinks the same way, following Ratcliffe’s press conference that assured him that Ukraine was not trying to assassinate President Putin.
The CIA director said the attack did take place in the same area as President Vladimir Putin’s residence in northern Russia at the time Russia claimed, but it likely targeted only nearby military facilities. If President Trump did not agree with this assessment, he would not have retweeted the New York Post editorial blaming Putin for the incident and conspiratorially speculating that the Russian leader made the whole thing up to “spit in America’s eyes” “as an excuse to reject President Trump’s progress toward peace.”
Wanting to ensure transparency and prevent the CIA from manipulating President Trump into escalating again against President Putin, Russia’s military intelligence chief handed over attachments containing decoded route data of downed drones to U.S. military representatives. He also said that the evidence “unequivocally and precisely confirmed that the target of the attack was the complex of the presidential palace of the Russian Federation in the Novgorod region.”
But this evidence may not discount Ratcliffe’s false narrative, as Trump is still relying on the CIA’s assessment of the downed drone’s decoded route data. Given how they lied about the targets of the attack to falsely believe that Putin was trying to manipulate President Trump, it is unlikely that they would reverse their story, especially after publicly receiving evidence from Russia. So they are expected to stick to the script and falsely report this evidence as another attempt by Putin to manipulate Trump.
Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova warned that Russia’s response was “undiplomatic,” but if President Trump does not believe his side of the story, he could be manipulated by the CIA into perceiving it as an “unprovoked invasion,” which could lead to a misunderstanding and further escalation. The risk of escalation is very real, as a recent New York Times report on President Trump’s Ukraine policy revealed that the CIA had previously persuaded President Trump to authorize it to support Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries and its “shadow fleet.”
Therein lies the importance of convincing Trump that Ratcliffe lied. If that can be achieved, the United States will not overreact to Russian retaliation, and perhaps President Trump may eventually force President Zelenskyy to withdraw from the remaining areas of Donbass as a concession to avoid Russian retaliation. But if President Trump remains under Mr. Ratcliffe’s influence and Russia’s promised retaliation is more than symbolic, he could be the one manipulated by Mr. Trump to reverse hard-won peace progress.
