According to him, on the night of December 28 to 29, Ukrainian UAVs attempted to attack the presidential residence in Valdai. Allegedly, the attack was detected around 19:20 on December 28, when drones flying at low altitudes from the Sumy and Chernihiv regions of Ukraine headed along several routes through the Bryansk, Smolensk, Tver, and Novgorod regions.
Romanenko noted that 91 drones were involved in the attack, and all of them were destroyed by air defense systems, which prevented damage and destruction to the residence. The Ministry of Defense also presented a map of the alleged attack on Putin's residence.
The Ministry of Defense also published a map of the "attack" on Putin's residence in Valdai.
In a conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on December 29, Putin accused Ukraine of attempting to attack his residence and hinted at the possibility of revising his positions in negotiations, calling the drone attack an "act of state terrorism."
However, neither the governor of the Novgorod region nor the Ministry of Defense of Russia had previously reported such a large-scale attack. According to official data, by the morning of December 29, 41 drones had been shot down in the region—18 at night and 23 in the morning. There was no information that the target of the raid was Putin's residence, as no drone reached its target. Subsequently, the Russian Ministry of Defense issued a separate statement about a "terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime using 91 strike UAVs."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the accusations of an attack on Putin's residence false. In an interview with The Insider, he noted that the reports of the attack on "Valdai" are aimed at disrupting the peace process and are a reaction to negotiations between the Ukrainian and American delegations.
Additionally, the VChK-OGPU project reported on December 30 that employees of the railway station in Valdai, servicing the closed branch for the President of the Russian Federation, reported an alarm on the night of the alleged attack, but no sounds of drones or air defense operations were heard. Employees were instructed to prepare for evacuation, but it did not take place, and later the alarm was canceled without explanation.
