As Trump claims progress, Russia says Ukraine’s attempt to strike a Putin residence will impact peace talks.

Russia’s top diplomat said Monday, hours after the president Trump touted progress toward ceasefire to put an end to war in Ukrainethat Moscow’s negotiating position would change following an alleged attempt by Ukraine to attack one of President Vladimir Putin’s isolated residences.

Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s close confidant and longtime Russian foreign minister, said the Kremlin had already decided on retaliatory measures against Ukraine, which he did not explain.

Lavrov accused Ukraine of launching dozens of drones to target Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region, hundreds of kilometers from Moscow and near Russia’s western borders with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Lavrov said 91 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and there were no casualties or damage caused.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quickly issued a statement calling the Russian accusations “lies” and an attempt to undermine peace talks led by the Trump administration.

President Trump met with Zelensky on Sunday at the US leader’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, after which Trump reiterated that Putin is committed to peace and that “Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed.”

This remark attracted considerable attention, given that Putin and his aides have repeatedly said rejected Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent nation.

Karoline Leavitt, White House spokesperson said in a post on social media that Mr. Trump had another “positive call with President Putin regarding Ukraine” on Monday, but she gave no further details about the discussion, and it was unclear whether the presidents spoke before or after Moscow accused kyiv of targeting Putin’s residence.

Lavrov did not say how or when Russia would change its negotiating position in negotiations to end the war, nearly four years after Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which his government still describes only as a special military operation. But Putin himself said Monday, during a meeting with his military commander, that “in the near future it is necessary to continue the offensive.”

Putin even expressed optimism that Russian forces would be able to take control of the four regions of eastern Ukraine that he had declared domination for about seven months after the full-scale invasion — Donetsk and Luhansk in Donbass, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine and its European partners have long warned that Putin’s continued engagement with the Trump administration over Ukraine is actually an attempt to buy time as his military further expands its control over Ukrainian territory.

Zelensky said after his Sunday meeting with Mr. Trump that he believed the United States and Ukraine had reached about 90 percent agreement on a draft 20-point peace plan, but both men acknowledged there remained lingering issues. These include Russia’s unwavering demand to grant it sovereignty over the entire Donbass.

Ukraine, like its European partners, has consistently rejected the idea of ​​rewarding Russia’s unilateral assault with territorial concessions, stressing that it could set a dangerous precedent not seen in Europe since Adolf Hitler’s land grab at the start of what would become World War II.

Although Putin has shown no willingness to give in to his demand for Russian territorial expansion, Mr. Trump asserted on Sunday that Ukraine and Russia were “closer than ever” to a peace agreement.

Zelensky said after the Mar-a-Lago meeting that Putin’s words must match his actions. Zelensky and Mr. Trump met just a day later Russia has launched a new blistering attack on the Ukrainian capital, kyiv.