The Kremlin has fiercely denied reports that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have already held a call on Ukraine in the days since Trump’s election victory. “This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, it’s just false information,” Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, according to Reuters. “This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is being published now, sometimes even in fairly reputable publications,” he added, apparently in reference to the Washington Poststory over the weekend saying Trump and Putin spoke last Thursday. The newspaper reported Trump took the call from one of his resorts in Florida, and that the president-elect “advised” the Russian premier against escalating the war in Ukraine with a view toward resolving the conflict “soon.” The latest denial comes after Peskov last month also denied claims in a book by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward about Trump and Putin speaking several times after the end of Trump’s first term. Peskov nevertheless confirmed the book’s claim that Trump gifted COVID testing equipment to Putin while in office.
