“I think we’ll speak,” the US president-elect has told NBC News
US President-elect Donald Trump has said that he has not talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin yet, but that the pair will likely speak in the near future. Putin earlier said that he was ready to talk to Trump.
In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump said that he had spoken to “probably” 70 world leaders since his election victory, but that Putin was not among them. However, he added, “I think we’ll speak.”
Speaking at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in the southern Russian city of Sochi around an hour before, Putin congratulated Trump on his win, and said that he is open to a phone call with the president-elect. “It wouldn’t be beneath me to call him myself,” Putin added.
Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to bring a swift end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict if elected, and said that he would talk with both Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to achieve this goal. Trump offered few further details, and Moscow responded cautiously, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating last month that he does not “think there is a magic wand” that can stop the fighting overnight.
Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved.
However, Putin said on Thursday that he takes Trump’s statements seriously, and that his proposals aimed at stopping the conflict “deserve attention, at the very least.”
Putin and Trump met in Helsinki in 2018, and again at the following year’s G-20 summit in Osaka. Trump’s first term in office was dominated by false accusations that he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, and he was heavily criticized in the US media for meeting with his Russian counterpart.
“During his first presidency…he was harassed by everyone on all sides, he was bullied, he was afraid of making a step to the left, to the right, saying the wrong thing,” Putin said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now during his new presidency. Whatever he does is up to him.”
Last month, American journalist Bob Woodward claimed that Trump had secretly spoken to Putin seven times since leaving office in 2021. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that any calls took place, while Trump struck a more ambiguous tone.
“I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing,” he told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country… he’s got 2,000 nuclear weapons and so do we.”
