Just two days after achieving electoral victory in the US presidential election, Donald Trump spoke by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was announced on Sunday by the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’, citing sources close to the Republican. Trump asked Putin last Thursday not to intensify the military offensive against Ukraine, one of the issues that could mark his international agenda from January.
This is the first conversation between the two men since the election and Trump called the Russian leader from his residence in Florida. ‘Post’ sources present on the call assure that the Republican leader showed interest in further conversations on “the end of the war in Ukraine.”
Trump also reminded Putin, again according to the American newspaper, of the American military presence in Europe and asked him not to intensify his war efforts against Ukraine. Ending this conflict is one of Trump’s election promises, but he has never revealed how he would achieve it.
The fear in Europe and among NATO allies is that Trump is prepared to defend a peace deal that requires Ukraine to cede some of its territory to Russia, a position that the EU and U.S. have also rejected so far. This week, the Kremlin said Putin’s willingness to engage with Trump did not imply a change in the goals of Russia’s “special military operation” on Ukrainian territory.
“The president (Putin) never said that the objectives of the special military operation would change,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference. “On the contrary, he repeatedly said that they remained the same,” he added. Putin also congratulated the Republican on his electoral victory and said he was ready to soon maintain contacts with the future US president, with whom he held a summit in Helsinki in mid-2018.
Trump says he has spoken with nearly 70 international leaders since last Tuesday, when he won the election that will make him the 47th president of the United States. Among these leaders is precisely the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and the businessman Elon Musk, one of his biggest supporters during the election campaign, was also present at this call.
According to the ‘Post’, these types of conversations usually take place once the election winner has officially begun the transition period with their predecessor. However, Trump has not yet met with Biden or reached the agreements that govern that process, so the calls are not monitored by the State Department or the work of U.S. government translators and interpreters.
