Kremlin confirms Trump sent Putin Covid test machines for personal use

While the Kremlin admitted that the GOP presidential nominee sent the Covid test machines to Putin, the spokesperson denied the claims about ‘seven’ phone calls

The Kremlin confirmed that Donald Trump sent Covid test machines to Vladimir Putin for personal use while he was still in office, Bloomberg reported. The confirmation comes as Bob Woodward claims in his forthcoming book, War, that the former US president gifted the Russian president “a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines” during the early stages of the pandemic in 2020.

FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan June 28, 2019. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY./File Photo (REUTERS)

Kremlin confirms Trump sent Covid test machines to Putin

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed the veteran reporter's claim in a statement to the outlet. “We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” the spokesman added. While the Kremlin admitted that the GOP presidential nominee sent the Covid test machines to Putin, Peskov shut down Woodward's claim that the two presidents had “seven” secret phone calls. “But about the phone calls — it’s not true,” he said.

This comes ahead of the release of Woodward's bombshell book, where he claimed that multiple sources confirmed that Trump had maintained his relationship with Putin to date. Citing a source, the 81-year-old journalist narrated an early 2024 incident where Trump ordered a former aide out of his Mar-a-Lago office to conduct a phone call with the Russian president. The same aide claimed that since his exit from the office in 2021, Trump had seven calls with Putin.

However, the Trump campaign shut down the claims, calling them “made up.” Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said that “none of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true.” Cheung went on to dub the claims “the work of a truly demented and deranged man … clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.”