Kremlin denies Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin spoke seven times since 2021

The Kremlin has aggressively denied a bombshell claim about Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump following his election loss.

Republican candidate Donald Trump may have spoken to President Vladimir Putin seven times since he left the White House.

“No, that is not the case,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian media outlet RBK as saying when asked about the specific claim.

The book “War” by famed reporter Bob Woodward said Trump retains a personal relationship with Putin even as he campaigns for another term.

Woodward cited an unnamed Trump aide who indicated the two may have spoken up to seven times since 2021 — despite the US effort to help Ukraine resist Russia’s full-scale assault.

Republican candidate Donald Trump may have spoken to President Vladimir Putin seven times since he left the White House.

In excerpts from the book published Tuesday by The Washington Post, Woodward reported that Trump while still president secretly sent Covid test kits to Putin despite a US shortage during the pandemic.

Russia on Wednesday also criticised Democratic White House hopeful Kamala Harris’s comments about Putin, saying they revealed “anger and frustration” in Washington.

In an interview broadcast Monday, Harris said that, if elected president, she would not meet with Putin for peace talks if Ukraine was not also represented.

Woodward cited an unnamed Trump aide who indicated the two may have spoken up to seven times since 2021 — despite the US effort to help Ukraine resist Russia’s full-scale assault.

She also reiterated her criticism of Trump’s policies on Ukraine, describing them as “surrender” to Moscow.

“Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” she told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program.

The Russian embassy to Washington in a post on social media criticised Harris’s “recent unacceptable statements”, without clarifying which ones.

It said Harris’s comments showed “frustration and impotence of the ruling circles in Washington”.

“Due to their inability of dealing with the Russian Federation and inflicting a ”strategic defeat”, their speech apparatuses channels anger and offensive rhetoric,” it said.

Woodward has chronicled American presidencies for 50 years, and this is his fourth book since Trump’s upset victory in 2016. Woodward began his presidential reportages with Richard Nixon, who was undone by the 1970s Watergate scandal exposed by Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein.

Woodward concluded that Trump’s interactions with an authoritarian president at war with a US ally make him more unfit for the presidency than Nixon.

‘Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history.’

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward writes.

The Trump campaign blasted the book as “made-up stories.” They are “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” spokesman Steven Cheung told AFP.

Trump has repeatedly praised Putin. During the 2016 campaign, the Republican memorably urged Moscow to “find” thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

US intelligence agencies later concluded Russia had meddled in that election in Trump’s favor, although a special counsel’s investigation found no conspiracy between the Trump camp and Moscow.

According to CNN, which obtained a pre-release book copy, Woodward quotes the outwardly mild-mannered Biden swearing as he discusses his personal and political challenges.

Biden called Putin “the epitome of evil,” blasted Netanyahu as a “liar” and said he “should never have picked” Merrick Garland as US attorney general.