President Donald Trump revealed that he had a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin about bringing an end to the ongoing war in Ukraine, marking the first known direct dialogue between the two leaders since early 2022, according to a report from the New York Post. Trump, who has stated his intention to end the war, has not yet publicly shared his specific plans for achieving that goal. However, he described the conflict as a “bloodbath” and mentioned that his team had engaged in “some very good talks.”
In an interview on Air Force One, Trump was asked by the New York Post how often he and Putin had spoken. He responded by saying that he “better not say.” He then added, “He [Putin] wants to see people stop dying,” when asked about the content of the discussions.
The White House did not respond to inquiries for comment after business hours.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed the matter through the Russian state news agency TASS, stating that “many different communications are emerging.” He explained, “These communications are conducted through different channels” when asked about the report from the New York Post. He also acknowledged that he might not be aware of all the communications, clarifying, “I personally may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”
The conflict in Ukraine’s eastern regions began in 2014 when a pro-Russian president was ousted following Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution, which led to Russia annexing Crimea. This sparked a war with Russian-backed separatists fighting against Ukraine’s military forces. Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was framed as a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine and to counter a perceived threat from Ukraine potentially joining NATO. Ukraine and its Western allies, particularly the U.S., rejected Russia’s actions, calling them an imperialistic land grab, and have vowed to repel Russian forces.
Currently, Russia controls a large portion of Ukraine, roughly equivalent in size to the U.S. state of Virginia, and it has been advancing with greater speed than during the early stages of the 2022 invasion.
Trump, who authored the 1987 book “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” has frequently expressed his desire to end the conflict and has suggested meeting with Putin to discuss potential resolutions. However, no specific timeline or location for such a summit has been made public. According to reports earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are viewed by Russia as potential sites for a meeting.
On June 14, Putin outlined his conditions for ending the war immediately: Ukraine would need to renounce its NATO ambitions and withdraw its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that are claimed by Russia and mostly under Russian control. Reuters reported in November that Putin is open to negotiating a peace deal with Trump, but he ruled out major territorial compromises and insisted that Ukraine abandon its NATO membership aspirations.
The Kremlin has urged caution regarding speculation about possible contacts between the Trump team and Russia concerning a peace agreement. Leonid Slutsky, the head of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, was quoted by the state news agency RIA on Thursday, stating that preparations for a meeting were “at an advanced stage” and that it could occur in either February or March.
Putin’s last conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden took place in February 2022, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The two leaders spoke for about an hour, according to the Kremlin.
Bob Woodward, a journalist for The Washington Post, wrote in his 2024 book “War” that Trump held direct conversations with Putin up to seven times after leaving the White House in 2021. When asked by Bloomberg about the accuracy of this claim in an interview last year, Trump replied, “If I did, it’s a smart thing.” The Kremlin denied Woodward’s report.
Trump also mentioned on Friday that he was likely to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week to discuss ways to end the conflict. He told the New York Post that he has “always had a good relationship with Putin” and that he has a specific plan for ending the war, though he refrained from sharing further details. “I hope it’s fast,” Trump added. “Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine.”
{Matzav.com}
Putin was ready to sign the Minsk agreement, an agreement fair to both sides.
Zelensky refused.
This whole war could’ve been prevented.
This whole war had an extremely significant goal: to destroy the 46 US funded bioweapon labs used to produce viruses and other bioweapons against the Russian population, stop the drug trafficking and child trafficking and rescue hundreds of thousands of children from their tunnels, stop the horrendous experiments down there, remove the neo-Nazis, and the bankrupting the people like they’ve been doing all over the world.
I knew about the trafficking and neo-Nazis, but not the rest.
Thanks for spelling it out.