Western media claims of an alleged phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump are false, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“There was no conversation,” he said. “This is completely untrue; it’s pure fiction,” Peskov emphasized.
He described the Washington Post and Reuters reports about the alleged telephone conversation as “the most remarkable example of the quality of the information that is published nowadays, sometimes even by quite respected outlets.”
The US media earlier alleged that Putin and Trump had discussed the situation in Ukraine and peace on the European continent.
According to the Russian News Agency, TASS, the last Putin-Trump telephone call that was reported on the Kremlin’s website took place in July 2020, at the end of Trump’s first term in office. Its agenda included various international issues, including strategic stability.
Communication continued in the following months as Putin issued a joint statement on Nagorno-Karabakh together with his counterparts from the US and France; additionally, he sent a message to Trump wishing him a speedy recovery from the coronavirus.
In addition, the Russian president wished a happy New Year 2021 and a merry Christmas to Trump and then-US President-elect Joe Biden.
Putin did not send any congratulatory messages to Western leaders in the past two years, the US president being no exception.
Putin and Trump met in person on several occasions. In particular, the Finnish capital of Helsinki hosted a Russia-US summit in July 2018, with the two leaders holding both a one-on-one conversation and expanded talks involving their delegations.
Veteran American journalist Bob Woodward, a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post newspaper, suggested that Trump and Putin could also have communicated after the 45th US president’s term in office had expired. However, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied those allegations.
Communication with US leaders
Putin last held a phone call with the US leader on February 12, 2022. During that call, he and Joe Biden spoke for over an hour, focusing on security guarantees for Russia and the situation surrounding Ukraine. They also discussed bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington.
This summer, Putin mentioned that Biden had sent him a letter regarding Ukraine. The Russian president responded in writing, stating that in order to end the military activities, Washington needed to stop providing weapons to Kiev, and once that was done, the conflict would end “in two to three months at the latest.” Putin did not specify when the exchange of letters had taken place, but judging by the context, it likely occurred during Russia’s special military operation.
