The Kremlin confirmed on Wednesday that former President Donald Trump sent coronavirus testing kits to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the height of the pandemic.
“We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bloomberg News in a written statement.
The story was originally published in “War,” a new book by veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward about Trump and President Joe Biden’s relationships with foreign leaders.
The book alleges that Trump secretly sent Abbott’s COVID-19 testing kits to Putin when there was a shortage of the kits. NBC News was unable to independently verify this.
Peskov also denied Woodward’s claim that Trump and Putin have spoken on the phone several times since Trump left office. “No, that’s not true,” he told Russian broadcaster RBC.
Trump also denied these reports in an interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. “He’s a storyteller. Bad idea. He’s lost his marbles,” Trump said of Woodward.
In a separate statement to Bloomberg, Trump’s re-election team accused the journalist of bias and said: “None of these stories that Bob Woodward made up are true.”
The book, which is scheduled to be published on October 15, raises questions about how Trump will handle the war in Ukraine if re-elected and whether he will continue to provide aid to the country.
Trump has repeatedly said that he can settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day if he is elected president again. But when asked about the claim in July, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia told reporters that “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be resolved in one day.”
The Republican candidate said last month that his relationship with Putin is “very good.” He said the same about his relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when they met at Trump Tower last month.
As a private citizen, Trump would need express permission from the sitting president to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government.
Woodward says in the book that senior adviser Jason Miller told him in July that he was “not aware” of any conversations between Trump and Putin, but that if they wanted to talk, “they would know how to communicate with each other.”
Trump’s critics have long taken issue with his sympathies for authoritarian leaders, including Putin. Trump has referred to Putin as “very smart” and a “strong man,” and praised the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “genius.”
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