Day: August 1, 2024

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Moscow on Sunday accused the United States of bankrolling Ukrainian attempts on the life of Russian President Vladmir Putin, hours after former US president Donald Trump was injured in an assassination attempt.

The charges from Moscow came after Ukrainian spy chief Kyrylo Budanov revealed his country’s failed assassination attempts on Saturday in an interview.

“There have been assassination attempts [on Putin], but, as you can see, they haven’t been successful so far,” the Ukrainian military intelligence chief told the New Voice news outlet.

The Kremlin was quick to downplay the comments when the interview was published, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov quoted in Russian media as saying that the attempts were “obvious.”

“All the threats coming from the Kyiv regime are obvious. Therefore, the security of the president is established at the proper level,” Russian state-owned media outlet RT quoted him as saying.

But the following day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Washington of funding the Ukrainian assassination attempts.

“Yesterday, one of the leaders of the Kyiv regime, Budanov, openly admitted that Ukrainian intelligence was preparing assassination attempts on the President of Russia. So this assassination attempt was prepared, again, with American money,” she wrote on Telegram on Sunday.

She charged that by providing “massive funding and uncontrolled supply of weapons,” the US had “created a terrorist structure in Ukraine — the Kyiv regime. This is a machine of murders, explosions, destruction, terrorist attacks against both political figures and the civilian population.”

In a post published hours after a gunman fired shots at Trump at an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Russian spokeswoman quipped, “Maybe it would be better to use this money to finance the American police and other services that should ensure law and order within the United States?”

One attendee was killed and two spectators were critically injured at the Trump rally. The Secret Service said after the dramatic incident on Saturday that it had killed the suspected shooter — who it said attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue.

Asked whether the Trump attack could affect the legitimacy of the United States’ upcoming election, Peskov said: “It is not for us to judge. We have not the slightest desire to interfere. This is a US matter.”

Putin has said the outcome of the US presidential election is unlikely to change anything for Russia, and that Trump’s presidency had damaged US-Russia relations.

But the Russian leader has taken a public interest in Trump’s statements that he could end the Ukraine war, saying he does not know the details but supports the idea of ending the war in principle.

The Kremlin did, however, charge that the Biden administration had created an atmosphere that provoked the attack on Trump.

“We do not believe that the attempt to eliminate and assassinate Trump was organized by the current authorities,” the Kremlin spokesman told reporters on Sunday. “But the atmosphere around candidate Trump… provoked what America is confronting today.”

US President Joe Biden has condemned the attack, saying there was no place for such violence in America. Peskov said Russia condemned any violence in the course of the political struggle.

He added that there were no plans for Putin to call Trump in light of the incident.