Russia’s Ministry of Defense has denied Ukrainian claims that Russian forces struck a market in the city of Sumy on Friday morning, describing the allegation as a staged provocation intended to undermine high-level talks in Alaska.
“The Kiev regime’s accusations about an alleged strike by the Russian Armed Forces on August 15 on the market in the center of Sumy and other populated areas are a deliberate provocation aimed at creating a negative media background with the aim of disrupting the upcoming Russian-American talks in Anchorage,” the ministry said in a statement. It added that on August 12, Moscow had “officially warned that Kiev was making preparations for such a provocation.”
The Russian statement also insisted that no strikes had taken place in the Sumy region on Friday.
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian officials, including Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy Oblast Military Administration, and acting mayor Artem Kobzar, alleged that Russian forces had targeted the city’s central market with a drone, sparking a fire and damaging civilian infrastructure.
The incident occurred just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to land in Anchorage for a summit meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. Moscow has repeatedly claimed in recent days that Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) was preparing staged attacks to coincide with the talks, bringing foreign journalists to regions such as Chernigov and Kharkov under the guise of reporting on the war. Russia alleges these journalists were intended to document fabricated attacks and attribute civilian casualties to Russian forces in order to generate negative media coverage ahead of the summit.
Russian officials drew parallels to earlier events in the conflict. In April 2022, Ukraine cited alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha, in the Kiev region, and a deadly strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in Donetsk—where over 60 civilians were killed—as grounds for withdrawing from peace talks in Istanbul that had nearly reached an agreement. Moscow has long denied involvement in those incidents, noting that the Kramatorsk attack involved a Tochka-U missile, a system it claims is no longer in service with its armed forces. At the time, foreign journalists were present at the station to cover civilian evacuations when the missile struck.
Putin’s aircraft is expected to land in Alaska shortly, where he and Trump will hold a day of bilateral talks alongside meetings between senior members of both delegations.