While Trump claims to have made progress, Russia says Ukraine’s attempt to attack a Putin residence will affect peace talks.

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

Sergey Lavrov, a close Putin confidant and long-time Russian foreign minister, said the Kremlin had already decided on retaliatory measures against Ukraine, which he did not clarify.

Lavrov accused Ukraine of launching dozens of drones at 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.

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

President Trump met with Zelenskyy on Sunday at the American leader’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, after which Trump again stated that Putin was committed to peace and that “Russia wants Ukraine to succeed.”

That observation attracted a lot of attention, given that Putin and his aides have dismissed Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent nation.

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

Lavrov did not say how or when Russia would change its negotiating position in talks to end the war, nearly four years since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which his government still refers to only as a special military operation. But Putin himself said earlier on 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 declared dominion for about seven months after the full-scale invasion: Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas, along with Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine and its European partners have long warned that Putin’s current engagement with the Trump administration over Ukraine is really a matter of buying time, as his military further expands its control over Ukrainian territory.

Zelenskyy said after his Sunday talks with Trump that he believed the United States and Ukraine had reached about 90% agreement on a draft 20-point peace plan, but both acknowledged there were outstanding issues. These include Russia’s unwavering demand to be granted sovereignty over the entire Donbas.

Ukraine, along with its European partners, has consistently rejected the idea of ​​rewarding Russia’s unilateral attack with territorial concessions, noting 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.

Even though Putin has shown no willingness to budge on his demand for an expansion of Russian territory, Trump said Sunday that Ukraine and Russia were “closer than ever” to a peace deal.

Zelenskyy said after the Mar-a-Lago meeting that Putin’s words must match his actions. Zelenskyy and Trump met just a day later Russia launched another devastating attack in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv.