The Kremlin has denied media reports that US President-elect Donald Trump held a call with Vladimir Putin, in which he is said to have warned the Russian president against escalating the war in Ukraine.
The call, which was first reported by the Washington Post on Sunday, is said to have happened on Thursday.
Trump is also reported to have mentioned America’s extensive military presence in Europe to Putin.
A Kremlin spokesperson said the reports were “pure fiction”, while Trump’s team told the BBC that it would not comment on the president-elect’s “private calls”.
Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung told the BBC: “We do not comment on private calls between President Trump and other world leaders.”
But he said leaders had begun the process of contacting the president-elect.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied a conversation had taken place.
“This is completely untrue, it is pure fiction. That is, this is simply false information. There was no conversation,” Peskov said.
Trump has promised to end the nearly three-year long war in Ukraine, but has yet to outline how he intends to do so.
Zelensky has previously warned against conceding land to Russia and has said that without US aid, Ukraine would lose the war.
While Peskov on Sunday spoke to Russian state media of “positive” signals from the incoming US administration, others say they trust the future president will not abandon Ukraine.
They include John Healey, the British defence secretary, who said he expected the US “to remain alongside allies like the UK, standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes to prevail over Putin’s invasion”.
Credit: bbc.com
