Former President Donald Trump sent coronavirus testing devices to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the height of the pandemic, the Kremlin claimed Wednesday in a statement.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told NBC News that at the beginning of the pandemic “there was a shortage of various medical equipment. And of course in the beginning all the countries tried to swap some aid.”
“We sent [artificial lung ventilators] to the States,” he said, adding that “the Americans sent us several samples of those testing systems as at that time there were very few of them. Many countries did this.”
The story was initially reported in “War,” a new book by veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, which reports on Trump and President Joe Biden’s relationships with foreign leaders.
The book claims that Trump secretly sent Abbott Covid-19 testing devices to Putin when the machines were in short supply. NBC News has not been able to independently verify this.
Peskov also denied Woodward's claim that Trump and Putin have spoken on the telephone several times since Trump left office. “No, that’s not true,” he told Russian outlet RBC.
Trump also denied the reporting in an interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And 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 made up stories by Bob Woodward are true.”
The book, which is set to be published Oct. 15, raises questions about how Trump would handle the war in Ukraine if re-elected and whether he would continue to provide aid to the country.
Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day if he’s elected president again. But when he was asked about this claim in July, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told reporters that “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”
The Republican nominee said last month that his relationship with Putin is “very good.” He said the same of his ties to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when the two met at Trump Tower last month.
As a private citizen, Trump would need the sitting president’s express permission 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 should they wish to speak, “they’d know how to get in touch with each other.”
Trump’s critics have long taken issue with his coziness with authoritarian leaders, including Putin. Trump has referred to Putin as “very savvy” and a “strong man,” and praised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius.”
