Russia has reacted to reports about a special bond between Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and Republican presidential contender Donald Trump.
Excerpts from journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming book War, which covers the Watergate scandal, surfaced on Tuesday. The book accused Trump of offering Putin a “bunch of Abbott Point of Care COVID test machines for his personal use” during the height of the pandemic. It further claims Trump held at least seven “private” calls with the Russian President after the White House exit.
Putin’s team is now stating Woodward’s account is partially true.
Acknowledging that Russia had indeed accepted COVID tests from Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bloomberg, “We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic.”
He, however, added that claims about the phone calls are “not true”.
In an interview with the New York Times, Peskov described that aspect of Woodward’s reporting as “a typical bogus story in the context of the pre-election political campaign”.
In Woodward’s account of events, Putin begged Trump to keep this a secret from others, warning him that “people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”
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What Trump and his team have to say on Woodward’s book
Although Trump’s affection for the Russian leader is well known, he boasted about their “very good relationship” while posing with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the US last month.
It would be unorthodox for a former president to speak with “an avowed adversary of the United States on the opposite side of a war,” as per Times. In the spring of 2020, the Trump administration announced that the self-styled “king of ventilators,” Trump, was shipping COVID-19 supplies to other nations, including Russia. It did not state that Putin was receiving tests from the US administration.
However, the Trump team has made it clear that it disagrees with every piece of reporting by Woodward. Trump even told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that the writer is just “a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles.”
Meanwhile, Trump campaign communications director, Steven Cheung, also dismissed Woodward’s claims, stating that “none of these made-up stories” in his trash book “are true.”