The Kremlin has confirmed that Donald Trump sent Vladimir Putin Covid tests when they were scarce during the early stages of the pandemic, as reported this week in a book by veteran US political journalist Bob Woodward.
The Russian president’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov largely confirmed the account of Woodward, whose book reveals how Trump secretly sent tests to the Russian president for his personal use, despite US shortages.
Peskov told journalists on Thursday that “all countries tried to somehow exchange between themselves” during the early phase of the pandemic, when there was not enough equipment. “We sent a supply of ventilator units to the US, they sent these tests to us,” he said. The exchanges occurred “when the pandemic was starting”, he said, adding that at this time tests were “rare items”.
According to Woodward, the Russian president told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you.”
Woodward also reported that Trump and Putin may have spoken up to seven times on the phone since 2021, including after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Peskov, however, denied this account, saying the calls “didn’t happen”.
The details about Trump’s ties to Putin are contained in a new book by Woodward, the celebrated US reporter, who with Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as US president. Woodward has written and co-written three books about the Trump presidency. His latest work, War, puts the spotlight on the Biden presidency, and covers Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s campaign against Hamas and US domestic politics.
While the revelations of Trump’s connections to Putin shed new light on the former US president’s campaign to pressure Republicans to block military aid for Ukraine, it is thought unlikely they will harm his remarkable popularity with his base, which has held firm despite numerous scandals, criminal and civil cases and his conviction for 34 felonies in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the result of the 2016 election.
Separately, the Kremlin spokesperson denied statements from the head of M15, Ken McCallum, that the GRU military intelligence agency was “on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”. In a speech on Tuesday, McCallum said intelligence services had seen “arson, sabotage and more”, an account that tallies with intelligence reports from across Europe.
The issue was raised by EU foreign affairs ministers in May, with one minister saying then that they were deeply worried about “sabotage, physical sabotage, organised, financed and done by Russian proxies”.
Responding to McCallum’s comments, the Kremlin spokesperson said the allegations were not worthy of attention. “All these statements are absolutely unsubstantiated and unfounded,” he said.