John Kirby, the US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, denied Russia’s “ludicrous” claim the US directed Ukraine to carry out the alleged attack and kill Putin, and accused the president’s spokesperson of lying, transmits CNN.
“I would just tell you Mr. Peskov’s lying. I mean, it’s obviously a ludicrous claim. The United States had nothing to do with this. We don’t even know what happened here,” said Kirby.
“But I can assure you the United States had no role in it whatsoever.”
The White House still has no indication who was behind the drone attack and Kirby said the US does not “endorse, we do not encourage, we do not support attacks on individual leaders.”
Russia doubled down on its bellicose rhetoric later Thursday when Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told local media that relations between the US and Russia are on the verge of an “open-armed conflict.”
“We are working to prevent relations with the US from plunging into the abyss of an open armed conflict. We are already standing on the edge, on the edge of this precipice,” Ryabkov told Russia’s Channel One Thursday, according to state media agency TASS.
