Explainer What to know about the Trump Putin call on Ukraine

MOSCOW - Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone on Monday, the third officially announced call this year between the presidents of the United States and Russia.

How often do they speak, how do they speak and what are their positions on the war?

HOW OFTEN HAVE THEY SPOKEN?

After Trumps inauguration in January, the first publicly announced telephone call between Trump and Putin was on Feb. 12.

Trump said then that both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had expressed a desire for peace in separate phone calls, and Trump ordered top U.S. officials to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

They spoke again on March 18. The Kremlin said they spoke for about 2 hours, one of the longest Putin calls.

Putin agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities temporarily but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire that Trump hoped would be the first step toward a permanent peace deal. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of breaking that moratorium on attacking energy facilities.

DO THEY SPEAK MORE OFTEN THAN IS ANNOUNCED?

The Kremlin said in March that there may have been more contacts between Trump and Putin than the publicly announced telephone calls over recent months.

Before the contacts with Trump, Putin last spoke to a sitting U.S. president in February 2022, when he and Joe Biden spoke shortly before the Russian leader ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in his 2024 book War reported that Trump had direct conversations as many as seven times with Putin after he left the White House in 2021.

Asked if that were true in an interview with Bloomberg last year, Trump said: If I did, its a smart thing. The Kremlin denied Woodwards report.

Reuters, The Washington Post and