Former US President Donald Trump has refused to confirm or deny contacting Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office in 2021, but said that doing so would have been “a smart thing.” Trump has repeatedly vowed to use his “great relationship” with Putin to end the Ukraine conflict if he is elected next month.
American journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, ‘War’, which was published this week, claims that Trump secretly spoke to Putin seven times since leaving office in 2021, and sent Russia Covid-19 testing equipment in 2020, while he was still president.
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Trump’s campaign initially declared that “none of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true,” but in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on Tuesday, the former president 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,” Trump told Mickelthwait. “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.”
Trump maintains that the Ukraine conflict never would have begun if he had won the 2020 election, and that President Joe Biden’s “stupid words” antagonized Putin into launching his offensive in February 2022. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ promise of open-ended support for Ukraine risks dragging the US into “World War III,” he has repeatedly declared.
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After meeting Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky last month, Trump boasted that he had a “very good relationship” with both Zelensky and Putin and promised to “get [the Ukraine conflict] resolved very quickly” if he wins November’s election.
According to his running mate, J.D. Vance, Trump would likely start talks with Russia, Ukraine, and European stakeholders to establish a demilitarized zone along the current front line, with Ukraine agreeing to stay out of NATO
The Kremlin has cast doubt on Trump’s promises of peace, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggesting that he does not “think there is a magic wand” that can stop the fighting overnight.
Peskov confirmed last week that Trump did indeed send Covid-19 tests to Russia in 2020.. “But about the phone calls – it’s not true,” he added.