KYIV — Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a call with President Donald Trump on Monday, accused Ukraine of attacking one of his residences, a claim Ukrainian leaders denied and called a distraction from peace talks and a pretext for further Russian attacks.
The escalating accusations, which came just a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Trump in Florida for negotiations to end the war, cast a shadow over the talks and demonstrated the fragility of the White House-led peace process that so far has failed to lead to a breakthrough.
“I don’t like it. That’s not good. … I learned about it from President Putin and he was very angry about it,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “It’s a delicate period of time. This is not the right time.”
He also noted that he had previously refused Ukraine’s request for long-range Tomahawk missiles. “I stopped the Tomahawks,” he said. “I didn’t want that.”
Russian officials did not immediately provide evidence for the claim of a Ukrainian attack. The CIA declined to comment on whether it had detected the type of attempted strike Moscow alleged.
“The Russians have come up with an obviously fake story about an alleged attack on some residence of the Russian dictator, so that they would have an excuse to continue their attacks on Ukraine, including on Kyiv, and to refuse to take the necessary steps to end the war,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
Trump’s meeting with Zelensky on Sunday focused on the latest version of a 20-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. European leaders, including from Britain, France and Germany, joined the meeting via conference call.
In a news conference Sunday evening, Trump sounded optimistic about the prospects for peace, saying his meeting with Zelensky had been “terrific” and had followed an “excellent” call with Putin. “I do think we’re getting a lot closer,” Trump said. But he left room for the possibility of failure, saying Russia and Ukraine would continue fighting if the current negotiations did not succeed.
Several difficult issues remained unresolved after Sunday’s meeting, Zelensky told journalists via voice notes in a WhatsApp group Monday. They included the duration of Western security guarantees for Ukraine, future control over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and territorial questions emanating from the war.
“The Kremlin agrees with Trump’s assessment that peace in Ukraine is now much closer,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said early Monday. But to stop the war, he added, Kyiv must withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Ukraine has refused to cede territory still under its control to Russia but is discussing the possibility of a demilitarized zone in Donbas that would require both Ukrainian and Russian troops to withdraw.
As Trump and Putin held another call Monday, Russia’s accusation that Ukraine had carried out a thwarted drone attack on one of Putin’s residences introduced another element of uncertainty into the talks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country did not intend to withdraw from peace negotiations with the United States but said it had “revised” its position in light of the accusations, without providing more detail. Moscow had already chosen targets for retaliating, he said, as Zelensky warned Ukrainians that they should be prepared for a mass attack on the government sector.
The 20-point plan, drafted by U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, says Ukraine will receive strong security guarantees, according to a summary. Zelensky has said they would be comparable to NATO’s Article 5, which commits to the collective defense of the alliance and treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. But the precise nature of the U.S. security commitment to Ukraine has yet to be made public.
Kyiv is eager for airtight assurances that Russia would not regroup after any ceasefire and attack Ukraine again. While the current peace proposal caps the duration of security guarantees at 15 years and offers the possibility that they could be extended, it also leaves open the possibility they would not.
Zelensky said Monday he asked Trump for lengthier guarantees. “I told him we would very much like to consider the option of 30, 40, 50 years. And that this would be a historic decision by President Trump. And the president said that he’ll consider it.”
Trump told Zelensky he had reviewed the plan with Putin, point by point — perhaps easing concerns that Russia and Ukraine are referring to different versions of the document, as they have in the past, which has added confusion to negotiations in recent weeks.
The thorniest issues remain control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which Russia seized during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Moscow has not yet managed to connect the plant to its electricity grid. Experts have repeatedly warned that the situation at the plant — because of nearby shelling or cuts to the plant’s power — remains precarious and could trigger a nuclear catastrophe.
While there have been discussions about whether Russia and Ukraine could eventually split the electricity generated by the plant, there is no agreement on who would run the facility. Russia has imprisoned many specialists from the plant, and others have fled or been forced to work under occupation. The plant is not currently providing electricity to Ukraine but must remain active at low levels to avoid a nuclear incident.
Zelensky signaled openness for the first time last week to suggestions that Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region be transformed into a demilitarized “free economic zone.” The Ukrainian leader said he would consider withdrawing troops from the remainder of the Donetsk region, which makes up part of Donbas, but only if Russia did the same.
The Kremlin has not publicly responded to that proposal, although Russia has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine must withdraw from the Donetsk region to end the war. Ukraine still controls several major cities in Donetsk and refuses to cede territory that Russia has not captured militarily.
“All these details will be part of security guarantees. Who will control the demilitarized zone — we don’t know yet if this will happen,” Zelensky said. “For now, we’re talking about a free economic zone. No details, but we’re talking about it.”
The United States has also continued to pressure Ukraine to organize presidential elections, which have been postponed since 2024 because the country is under martial law. Zelensky says he is prepared to host elections but cannot do so without a ceasefire and other security guarantees that will ensure Russia does not use a voting period to launch mass attacks on Ukraine or otherwise interfere with the vote.
There are other barriers to holding an election. Millions of Ukrainians have fled abroad during the war, are displaced internally or are living under Russian occupation.
Ukraine has said it needs at least a 60-day ceasefire to organize any vote, including for a potential referendum on key issues in the peace plan. Russia refuses to sign onto a ceasefire, saying that it would only extend the war — a position that Trump said Sunday evening he understood.
“All signals from Russia are that they don’t want a ceasefire,” Zelensky said Monday. “America is working on this.”
Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent days killed several civilians and left 1 million families without electricity in Kyiv; power is slowly being restored. Zelensky said he highlighted the recent attacks in his meeting with Trump.
“On the one hand, [Putin] tells the U.S. president that he wants to end the war, that this is his desire,” Zelensky told journalists Monday. “But on the other hand … all his messages are about him being ready and willing to continue the war; he strikes us with missiles, speaks openly about it, rejoices at the destruction of civilian infrastructure, gives some orders to his generals on where to go, what to capture.”
Abbakumova reported from Riga, Latvia. Warren Strobel and Isaac Arnsdorf in Washington contributed to this report.
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