Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine three years ago this month. Trump has claimed that he could end the conflict in one day.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Sunday said he could neither confirm nor deny any contacts between Trump and Putin, Russian state news agency TASS reported. The White House has not commented on the Post’s article.
Peskov said last week that contacts between Washington and Moscow have intensified, but a Trump-Putin call would be the first direct talk between the two leaders since Putin’s launch of what he famously dubbed a “special military operation” in February 2022.
Three years later, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died and 370,000 have been wounded, but the number of Russian casualties is larger, with an estimated 198,000 deaths and more than 550,000 wounded. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disclosed the figures for his side for the first time last December. U.S. officials have confirmed a larger number of losses among Russian troops.
Moscow, however, can rely on a larger population and more resources. Kyiv has managed to bring the war inside Russian territory with a series of incursions in the Kursk region in recent months. Russia has occupied a wide part of Ukraine’s southeastern regions, from Crimea to the border, and it is pushing its offensive.
“All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them — and for no reason,” Trump told the New York Post.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy is set to meet with U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference, which starts on Friday in Germany. Their meeting comes just after Trump proposed to provide Kyiv with security safeguards in exchange for accessing the country’s critical raw materials and mineral reserves.