Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev has accused the Washington Post of “truth distortion” over a quote wrongly attributed to him, and demanded the outlet apologize.
In an article on Saturday about Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to the US, the outlet suggested that a recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, shifted Washington’s stance on the Ukraine conflict.
The Washington Post cited Dmitriev as saying: “Zelensky’s tour summed up in one sentence: Putin outmaneuvered everyone again.” It claimed that Dmitriev made the remark on Telegram.
In a post on X on Saturday, Dmitriev expressed outrage that the line – which he had reposted from another news channel – was attributed to him.
“Another eye-opening case of truth distortion from the fake @washingtonpost,” he wrote. “I reposted a post from a Telegram channel – yet your article attributed those quotes to me. That’s like blaming users for retweets.”
Dmitriev demanded that the outlet correct the attribution immediately, issue an apology, and launch an internal probe.
Later in the day, the outlet issued a correction, admitting that a previous version of its article had “incorrectly attributed” the quote to Dmitriev. The presidential aide thanked the WaPo on X for acknowledging the error, but asked the paper to issue a formal apology and publish both the apology and the correction “in the next print edition.”
Hellbound and Down 