The Kremlin affirmed on Wednesday that former United States President Donald
Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin Covid-19 testing kits during the
height of the pandemic, as reported by American journalist Bob Woodward in a new
book.
“We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Kremlin spokesperson
Dmitry Peskov said in a written response on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. That
the U.S. and Russia exchanged medical equipment during the pandemic was already
known.
But Woodward writes in his book that when Trump was still president in 2020, he
“secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his
personal use” during a time period when Covid tests were scarce.
Trump denied to ABC news that he sent such Covid test kits to Putin.
In his book, Woodward also claims that the two leaders had spoken by phone
several times since Trump left office in 2021 — the Kremlin denied these claims.
“No, [it’s] not true,” Peskov told Russian daily newspaper RBK on Wednesday,
referring to the phone calls.
Trump campaign aide Jason Miller on Tuesday also denied these claims, saying
that he had never heard of such calls; while Trump’s campaign spokesperson
Steven Cheung said that none of the stories in the book are true, and called
Woodward an “angry, little man.”