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A Kremlin spokesperson said that Donald Trump’s administration did send Russian president Vladimir Putin medical equipment during the onset of the cornavirus pandemic, despite Trump’s campaign denying any exchange took place. Moscow also denied that Putin spoke on the phone with Trump seven times after he left office in 2021, according to a state news agency.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, claimed an exchange of equipment did happen but denied that phone calls took place, a claim made in Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming book, titled War.
“No, that’s not true,” Peskov said, according to TASS.
He told Bloomberg that there was communication between Washington and Moscow during the outset of the coronavirus pandemic regarding equipment exchanges.
“We also sent [the US] equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Peskov told Bloomberg. “But as for the phone calls, this is not true.”
Trump denied that he sent equipment to Moscow in a statement to ABC News.
“That’s false,” Trump told ABC News’s ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,”
The Kremlin’s statements appear to contradict the information coming out of Trump’s camp. However, the Kremlin provided no evidence of its claim that Trump had sent Covid testing equipment to Putin. The US government and intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned of Russian efforts to spread disinformation in the West, particularly in the build-up to the US election.
The Independent has requested comment from the Trump campaign.
Trump’s campaign has also denied Woodward’s claims regarding the phone calls.
“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true,” Cheung said in a written statement to TASS.
“President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount store or used as toilet tissue,” Cheung said in a statement on Tuesday.
Woodward attributes his claim that Trump and Putin stayed in contact after his presidential term expired to a single, anonymous Trump aide.
The New York Times wrote an early story about the book, and described a scene in which the aide was ordered to leave a room at Mar-a-Lago so Trump could take a call with Putin.
Cheung attributed Woodward’s claims in the book to the journalist’s frustration over the fact that Trump is suing him over recordings related to his previous book Rage.
“Woodward is an angry little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously,” Cheung said.
While researching Rage, Woodward recorded conversations he had with Trump. Woodward later released those recordings, which Trump claims he did not give Woodward permission to do. Trump subsequently sued Woodward, who claims he was never given any restriction over how he could use the recording.
The veteran journalist’s new book does not provide explicit details about the nature of the alleged calls between Trump and Putin, but does claim that at one point Putin — fearing infection by the coronavirus — asked Trump to send him “a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”
The book also claims that Putin asked Trump to keep the exchange a secret to protect his reputation.
“I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Putin allegedly told Trump, according to Woodward’s reporting.
Trump reportedly told the Russian leader that “I don’t care.” But Putin allegedly insisted, claiming it would look worse for Trump than it would for him should the transaction come to light.
Woodward’s book is published in the US on October 15.
