Kremlin comments on Trump's leaked threat to bomb Moscow
Photo: Dmitry Peskov (Getty Images)
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov commented on an audio recording in which US President Donald Trump allegedly threatens to bomb Moscow in the event of an escalation of the situation around Ukraine.
The journalist noted with reference to the audio that everyone on the Internet claims that Trump allegedly threatened Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to bomb Moscow and Beijing in the event of hostilities in Ukraine and Taiwan. She asked Peskov whether he could confirm that such a conversation had taken place, and if so, when, and what the general assessment of such a leak of what was essentially a private conversation to the media was.
In response, the spokesperson said that he could neither confirm nor deny this statement.
"Look, you're asking me to confirm whether Trump gave a speech in America when he allegedly spoke to some donors in 2024. But at the very least, this is not entirely correct. I can't confirm or deny that with all my desire. We are talking about Trump's speech in 2024 in America. I work in Russia, thank God," he said.
After that, Peskov tried to make this audio recording look like a fake.
"We don't know whether it is fake or not. There are a lot of fakes now. Often, there is much more fake news than true information. And we always proceed from this when analyzing certain news," he said.
The journalist clarified that the question was actually about whether Trump really said this to Putin, and if so, when he said it.
"It's hard to say. The fact is that there were no phone calls then. As far as I understand it, we are talking about a period when Trump was not yet president of the United States. Therefore, I recommend that you address your questions to the White House," Peskov said.
Leaked audio of Trump's conversation
Today, on July 9, CNN published an audio recording of a statement in which Trump is heard saying that he made last year at a private donor meeting.
In the conversation, Trump is heard saying that he once tried to keep Putin from attacking Ukraine and threatened to "bomb the sh*t out of Moscow."
These statements were reportedly made while Trump was running for a second term. They were recorded at charity events in 2024 in New York and Florida.
Read more about this recording and Trump's statement in the RBC-Ukraine report.
Last May, journalist Josh Dawsey published Trump's statement about Putin's threats to "bomb Moscow" in The Washington Post. However, the audio recording itself was not published at the time.
Trump himself has stated dozens of times without evidence that if he had been president of the United States, Russia's war against Ukraine would never have started.
