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Russia’s top diplomat said Monday, hours after President Trump touted progress toward a ceasefire to end the war in Ukraine, that Moscow’s negotiating position would change following an alleged attempt by Ukraine to attack one of President Vladimir Putin’s far-flung residences.
Sergey Lavrov, a close Putin confidant and Russia’s longtime foreign minister, said the Kremlin had already decided on retaliatory measures against Ukraine, which he did not elucidate.
Lavrov accused Ukraine of launching dozens of drones to target Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region, hundreds of miles from Moscow and near Russia’s western borders with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Lavrov said 91 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and there were no casualties and no damage caused.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quickly issued a statement calling the Russian accusation “lies” and an effort to undermine the peace talks being spearheaded by the Trump administration.
Ukranian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu/Getty
President Trump met with Zelenskyy Sunday at the American leader’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, after which Mr. Trump claimed again that Putin was committed to peace and that, “Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed.”
That remark drew considerable attention, given that Putin and his aides have repeatedly dismissed Ukraine’s right to even exist as an independent nation.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a social media post that Mr. Trump held another “positive call with President Putin concerning Ukraine” on Monday, but she offered no further detail of the discussion, and it was unclear whether the presidents had spoken before or after Moscow accused Kyiv of targeting Putin’s residence.
Lavrov did not say how or when Russia would change its negotiating position in the talks to end the war, nearly four years since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which his government still refers to only as a special military operation. But Putin himself said earlier on Monday, during a meeting with his military commander, that “in the near future, it is necessary to continue the offensive.”
Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS 
Putin even voiced optimism that Russian forces would be able to seize control of all four regions of eastern Ukraine that he declared dominion over about seven months into the full-scale invasion — Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas, along with Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine and its European partners have long warned that Putin’s ongoing engagement with the Trump administration on Ukraine is really a play for time, as his military further expands its control over Ukrainian territory.
Zelenskyy said after his Sunday talks with Mr. Trump that he believed the U.S. and Ukraine had reached about 90% agreement on a draft 20-point peace plan, but both men acknowledged there were lingering issues. These include Russia’s unflinching demand that it be given sovereignty over the entire Donbas.
Ukraine, along with its European partners, has consistently rejected the idea of rewarding Russia’s unilateral assault with territorial concessions, noting that it could set a dangerous precedent unseen in Europe since the landgrab by Adolf Hitler at the beginning of what would become World War II.
Despite Putin having shown no willingness to bend on his demand for an expansion of Russia’s territory, Mr. Trump claimed Sunday that Ukraine and Russia were “closer than ever before” to a peace settlement.
Zelenskyy said after the meeting in Mar-a-Lago that Putin’s words must match his actions. Zelenskyy and Mr. Trump met just a day after Russia launched another blistering attack on Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv.
