Russia claims it handed the U.S. evidence of drone attack on Putin’s residence

On Jan. 1, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had conducted a “special technical examination of a navigation system unit” allegedly recovered from a Ukrainian drone. According to Moscow, the UAV was shot down by Russian air defenses on the night of Dec. 29, 2025, in the airspace over Russia’s Novgorod Oblast. Russian security services claim they extracted a so-called “flight mission file” from the drone.

The ministry asserted that it decoded “routing data” which allegedly shows that the final target of the Ukrainian drones on Dec. 29, 2025, was “one of the facilities of Putin’s residence” in Novgorod Oblast.

Russia says it passed this data to the American side — specifically to a representative of the U.S. military attaché’s office at the US Embassy in Moscow. According to Moscow, the Americans were handed “materials with decoded routing data as well as a controller from a Ukrainian UAV.”

The Russian Defense Ministry also published a video on Telegram showing Admiral Igor Kostyukov, head of Russia’s military intelligence (GRU), handing the materials to the US military attaché.

In the video, Kostyukov once again claims that fragments of the drone were recovered in which the navigation systems were “well preserved” and “fully functional.” He says Russian specialists allegedly decoded the “memory content of the navigation controllers.” The footage showed an object resembling a controller being handed to the U.S. representative along with a folder of documents. Kostyukov expressed hope that this step will “remove all remaining questions.”

Ukrainian experts have not publicly commented on the Russian Defense Ministry’s claims so far.

On Dec. 31, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Ukraine did not attempt to attack Putin’s residence, directly contradicting Moscow’s claims. According to WSJ sources, the assessment was made by the National Security Agency and confirmed by the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Dec. 29, following a meeting between the Ukrainian and U.S. presidents in Florida, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of launching 91 drones at Putin’s Valdai residence and threatened a “retaliatory strike.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Lavrov’s statements as “yet another Russian lie” and warned that Russia may be preparing strikes on Kyiv.

Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov later said that Russia will “reconsider a number of agreements and decisions” discussed with the United States following the alleged drone “attack.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, commenting on the incident on Dec. 29, said it was “not the right time for this” and added that he would clarify whether the attack had actually taken place.

Later, analysts from the Institute for the Study of War also debunked Lavrov’s claims, noting that there is no evidence of an attack. ISW pointed out that residents of Valdai did not report air defense activity that night, and that Russia’s initial Defense Ministry reports did not match Lavrov’s later statements.

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker also publicly expressed doubts about the Kremlin’s claims of a Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s residence.