Kremlin declines to ‘confirm or deny’ Putin phone call with Trump

The Kremlin has neither confirmed nor denied that US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had spoken by phone to discuss the war in Ukraine, Russian news agency TASS reported on Sunday.

In comments reported by The New York Post, Trump said on Saturday that he had spoken to Putin to begin negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, though did not clarify when the call had taken place or how many times he and Putin had spoken.

Putin “wants to see people stop dying,” Trump said, before reiterating his previous claim that the war in Ukraine “never would have happened” if he had been president in 2022. He also confirmed the existence of a concrete plan to end the war: “I hope it’s fast. Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”

Though Putin has not commented on the New York Post story so far, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov used ambiguous language when addressing the matter to reporters on Sunday, saying that there were “many different communications” being conducted “through many different channels” and that he was unable either to confirm or deny that the call had taken place.

On Friday, Trump said during a press conference in Washington that he would “probably” meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “next week”, while Zelensky told Reuters later the same day that it was essential he meet Trump in person before the US president met with Putin, “otherwise it will look like a dialogue about Ukraine without Ukraine”.