US President Donald Trump said he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone about ending the war in Ukraine, 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 not yet set out in public how he would do so, said last week that the war was a bloodbath and that his team had had “some very good talks”.
In an interview aboard Air Force, Trump told the New York Post that he had “better not say,” when asked how many times he and Putin had spoken.
“He [Putin] wants to see people stop dying,” Trump told the New York Post. The White House did not respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.
Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy next week to discuss ending the war.
Trump said that he has “always had a good relationship with Putin” and that he has a concrete plan to end the war. But he 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”.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency that “many different communications are emerging”.
“I may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war and that he will meet Putin to discuss it, though the date or venue for a summit is still not publicly known.
Putin last spoke to former US president Joe Biden in February 2022, shortly before Putin ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine. The two leaders spoke for about an hour then, the Kremlin said.
