US President Donald Trump said he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone about ending the war in Ukraine, the New York Post reported, the first known direct conversation between Putin and a US president since early 2022.
Trump, who has promised to end the war in Ukraine, but has not yet set out in public how he would do so, last week said that the war was a bloodbath and that his team had had “some very good talks.”
In an interview aboard Air Force One on Friday Trump told the New York Post that he had “better not say,” when asked how many times he and Putin had spoken.
Photo: AP
Putin “wants to see people stop dying,” Trump told the paper.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday told the TASS state news agency that “many different communications are emerging.”
“These communications are conducted through different channels,” Peskov said when asked by TASS to comment directly on the report. “I personally may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”
Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine and counter what he said was a grave threat to Russia from potential Ukrainian membership of NATO.
Ukraine and its Western backers, led by the US, said the invasion was an imperial style land grab and vowed to defeat Russian forces.
Moscow controls a chunk of Ukraine about the size of the US state of Virginia and is advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the invasion.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war and that he would meet Putin to discuss it, although the date or venue for a summit is still not publicly known.
On Friday, Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy next week to discuss ending the war.
Trump told the New York Post that he has “always had a good relationship with Putin” and that he has a concrete plan to end the war, but did not disclose further details.
“I hope it’s fast,” Trump said. “Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”
On June 14 last year, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
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