There is no real preparation for a phone call between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump. This was reported to TASS on Wednesday by the press secretary of the Russian head of state, Dmitry Peskov.
"Not yet," Peskov said in response to a question about whether the relevant request has already been received from Trump's team.
Trump, in an interview with NBC on Nov. 8, said he had not yet spoken to the Russian president since winning the election, but allowed for the possibility. In turn, Putin from the stage of the Valdai plenary session congratulated Trump on his election victory and noted that the Russian side is "not ashamed" to call it herself.
After that, reports of an alleged conversation between the two politicians appeared in the Western press. The Kremlin representative had to refute the claims of The Washington Post and Reuters.
Peskov called this "the most striking example of the quality of information that is now being published, sometimes even in quite respectable publications".
The last telephone conversation between Putin and Trump, the Kremlin recalls, took place in July 2020 (in those months, Trump was completing his first presidential term).
The agenda included various international issues, including strategic stability. In the following months, there were other contacts - Putin, together with his US and French colleagues, issued a joint statement on Nagorno-Karabakh, and also sent a telegram to Trump wishing him a speedy recovery from Covid.
In addition, the Russian president congratulated Trump and Biden on the coming 2021 and Merry Christmas. Politicians have also held summit meetings on many occasions.
In July 2018, a Russian-American summit was held in Helsinki, during which the leaders held a private conversation with the participation of delegations.