Zelensky officials strike a defiant mode after a report by CNN exposes new details about  foiled Wagner mercenaries capture in Minks and Ukraine’s involvement in it.

In an official commentary for Bukvy,  Zelensky’s spokesman said the president’s office knows about the CNN investigation arguing they learnt ‘no new information that could need response from the President’s Office’.

The CNN revelations, though, got a riling commentary from Zelensky’s advisor Mykhailo Podolyak. On Wednesday, he blamed the American broadcaster  for spreading narratives of Russia’s intelligence and propaganda media outlets like ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’.

According to Zelensky’s spokesman, Mykhailo Podolyak expressed his personal views about the CNN story.

“Mr.Podolyak articulated his own position, which, rather often, don’t contradict the position of the President’s Office, and may happen to  be different in tonality  and stylistics’.

When asked to confirm or deny the CNN information of the US involvement in the last year’s sting operation by Ukrainian intelligence, Zelensky’s spokesman failed to offer a clear answer stating that ‘it appears that the US have denied it. And we will provide no more further comments [about it].’

The CNN report cited a senior US official who said the US intelligence ‘was aware of the operation but denied any involvement’.

When asked if Zelensky or the President’s Office were going to take action against CNN over the report allegations, Nikiforov said ‘this hasn’t been discussed yet’.

It is worth noting that in 2019 BBC agreed to pay hefty damages  and apologized to then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko after its  news report wrongly claimed  he had made a secret payment to Donald Trump’s lawyer seeking extended meeting with the US president.