MOSCOW, Feb 9 : US President Donald Trump said he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone 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 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 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.
"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.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov 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 New York Post report. "I personally 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. REUTERS
