U.S. Finds Ukraine Didn’t Target Putin in Drone Strike

Disclosure of the findings come as Trump appeared to play down the Russian claim of an attempted drone attack.

WASHINGTON—U.S. national-security officials said Wednesday that Ukraine didn’t target Russian President Vladimir Putin or one of his residences in a recent drone strike, challenging Moscow’s assertion that Kyiv sought to kill the Russian leader.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.(AFP)

That conclusion is supported by a Central Intelligence Agency assessment that found no attempted attack against Putin had occurred, according to a U.S. official briefed on the intelligence.

The CIA declined to comment.

Ukraine was looking to strike a military target that Kyiv had hit before, located in the same region as Putin’s country residence but not close by, the U.S. official said.

President Trump on Wednesday appeared to play down the Russian claim of an attempted drone attack, posting a link to a New York Post editorial and sharing the headline: “Putin ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace.”

Putin told Trump in a phone conversation recently that Ukrainian drones had targeted his residence, known as Dolgiye Borody, or Long Beards, along a lake shore in the country’s northwest.

Trump said he was “very angry” after Putin leveled his allegation in a phone call. Asked if the U.S. had evidence such an attack had taken place, Trump replied: “You are saying, maybe the attack didn’t take place—that is possible too, I guess, but President Putin told me this morning it did.”

Ukrainian officials have denied undertaking any such attack, saying Putin is seeking a pretext to try to sour relations between Washington and Kyiv and weaken Ukraine’s negotiating hand in U.S.-brokered talks on ending the war.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com, Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com