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Trump declines to say if he’s spoken to Putin since leaving office, media reports

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Trump declines to say if he’s spoken to Putin since leaving office, media reports
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) looks at U.S. President Donald Trump during the welcoming ceremony before the G20 Summit's Plenary Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Nov. 30, 2018. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump on Oct. 15 declined to confirm if he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office in 2021 but said, "If I did, it’s a smart thing."

Trump had previously denied claims from journalist Bob Woodward’s book that he had multiple phone calls with Putin after leaving the White House, calling it "absolutely wrong."

During an interview with Bloomberg at the Chicago Economic Club, he refused to comment directly on the matter, saying: "If I did, it’s a smart thing... If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country."

He also reportedly added: "Russia has never had a president that they respect so much."

Earlier, Trump said that during his presidency, he "(got) along very well with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," implying that the Russian leader often talked about his ambition to control Ukraine.

The comments came three weeks before the U.S. presidential election, which can have a profound impact on Washington's support for Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression.

"I get along very well with Putin. I got; I fully understand what's happening," the Republican candidate for U.S. presidency said at a town hall event in Oaks, Pennsylvania, regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"It (Ukraine) was the apple of his eye; he used to talk about it. But I said, 'You're not going in,' and he wasn't going in."

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Olena Goncharova

Head of North America desk

Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

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Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, war has become a daily reality for thousands of Ukrainian children. Some Ukrainian military units, such as the Azov Brigade, offer boot camps for teenagers to teach them the basics of self-defense, first aid, dry firing, and other survival skills — helping them prepare for both the realities of today and the uncertainties of the future.

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