On Sunday The Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump held his first phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since being elected, saying it focused on achieving peace in Ukraine. The call supposedly happened from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Thursday.
"During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe," WaPo wrote, citing several sources.
But the Kremlin is denying that any of this happened. It is saying the call didn't even take place. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the Post report as "pure fiction" and said that currently there are no plans for the Russian president to speak to Trump.
"This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, it’s just false information. There was no conversation," Peskov told reporters in a briefing.
"This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is being published now, sometimes even in fairly reputable publications," Peskov added.
He was asked if there are any plans of Putin to soon speak to Trump or be in contact, to which Peskov responded that "There are no concrete plans yet."
American media reports of the alleged call, which Russia now denies happened, sounded hopeful - given the talks were said to focus on "the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon."
Interestingly, Reuters had also reported the call had taken place, but all the reports were based on anonymous sources. The Trump team has essentially refused to confirm or deny on an official level:
Asked about the purported Trump-Putin call, Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, said: "We do not comment on private calls between President Trump and other world leaders."
Ukraine had previously expressed it remained totally unaware of any call: "Reports that the Ukrainian side was informed in advance of the alleged call are false. Subsequently, Ukraine could not have endorsed or opposed the call," foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi had said to Reuters.
Independent geopolitical analysis website Moon of Alabama views the Kremlin's denial as likely more accurate:
I doubt that the Trump campaign was listening live to Putin and picked up the phone to call him on that very same day. I thus believe the Kremlin spokesman - i.e no call has taken place - and regard the Washington Post report as a hoax.
The Washington Post sourcing - "a person familiar with the call" - is extremely vague. The authors of the piece are Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson and Josh Dawsey.
Ellen Nakashima is known for 'reporting' this or that nonsense about 'Russigate' for which she and others received a Pulitzer Price. We today know that the alleged Russian influence in the 2016 election was a hoax that has since been thoroughly debunked.
One very curious line from the WaPo report included Trump warning Putin about "Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe"—which is unlikely to make Putin very fearful given US troop numbers in Europe are not yet in very substantial or huge numbers.
���� KREMLIN: NO, WAPO, TRUMP DID NOT CALL PUTIN... YOU LIED.
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 11, 2024
Russia is denying reports that President-elect Trump called Putin last week to discuss ending the Ukraine war.
The Washington Post claimed Trump told Putin to hold back on making the conflict worse, but the Kremlin… pic.twitter.com/KI80MQZX0O
Russian state media reminds the world on Monday that "Russia, which currently has the advantage on the battlefield, has said that it will only accept an outcome that addresses the core causes of the Ukraine conflict." The report adds: "Those include NATO’s enlargement in Europe and Kiev’s discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians, according to Moscow.