(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said that he has talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine, the New York Post reported late on Saturday.
In an interview aboard Air Force One on Friday Trump said that he had “better not say,” when asked how many times the two leaders have spoken.
“He (Putin) wants to see people stop dying,” Trump told the New York Post.
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Neither the Kremlin nor the White House immediately responded to Reuters’ request for comment outside business hours.
In late January, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin is ready to hold a phone call with Trump and Moscow is waiting for word from Washington that it is ready too.
On Friday, Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy next week to discuss the end of the war.
The war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, will mark its third anniversary on February 24. Thousands of people, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed during the conflict.
Trump told the New York Post that he has “always had a good relationship with Putin” and that he has a concrete plan to end the war. But he did not disclose further details.
“I hope it’s fast,” Trump said. “Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”
(Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Additional reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
