Russian President Putin may go to Miami as a member of the ⁠G20, the Kremlin said on April 24, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book, War.

The revelations were made in the famed Watergate reporter’s latest book, which also details President Joe Biden’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘s assortment of burner phones. The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, denied the accounts in the book. “None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement.

Here is more from the book:

Mr. Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago so that the former president could have a private call with Mr. Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Mr. Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Mr. Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven in that period, according to the book.

Trump’s relationship with Mr. Putin has been scrutinized since his 2016 campaign for President, when the then-candidate memorably called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.

U.S. intelligence agencies later determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, though an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. In 2018, Trump publicly questioned that finding following an in-person meeting with Mr. Putin in Helsinki.

In recent years, Trump has criticized U.S. support for Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. He has said Ukraine should have made concessions to Mr. Putin before Russia invaded in 2022. He also previously touted his good relationship with Mr. Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine.

Woodward also reports that Trump sent Mr. Putin COVID-19 test machines for his personal use as the virus began spreading in 2020.

Mr. Putin told Trump not to tell anyone because people would be mad at Trump over it, but Trump said he didn’t care if anyone knew, according to the book. Trump ended up agreeing not to tell anyone.

The book doesn’t specify when the machines were sent but describes it as being when the virus spread rapidly through Russia. It was previously reported by The Associated Press and other agencies that Trump’s administration in May 2020 sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries, including Russia.

One of Trump’s longest-term allies, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, blamed Trump’s ongoing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged to a cult of personality in which the former President’s ensconcement at Mar-a-Lago and circle of aides and advisers “constantly feed this narrative,” according to the book.

The weekend after Russia invaded Ukraine, Graham was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which the Senator characterized as “a little bit like going to North Korea.” Mr. Graham added that “everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”

On politics, Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Graham’s counsel was part of what persuaded Trump to run again for the presidency.

In March, during one of his many visits to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Mr. Graham told Woodward that he had been meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when Graham suggested they call Trump. From “a bag containing about 50 burner phones,” Prince Mohammed “pulled out one labeled ‘TRUMP 45.’” On another trip, Woodward wrote, the Saudi leader retrieved another “burner phone, this time labeled: JAKE SULLIVAN ” when the men called Biden’s National Security Adviser.

The book also details Mr. Biden’s complicated relationship with Mr. Netanyahu as well as private moments when the President has been fed up with him over the Israel-Hamas war.

Mr. Biden’s “frustrations and distrust” of Netanyahu “erupted” this past spring, Woodward writes. The president privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “bad f——— guy,” according to the book. Mr. Biden said he felt, in Mr. Woodward’s accounting, that Mr. Netanyahu “had been lying to him regularly.” With Mr. Netanyahu “continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas.” Mr. Woodward wrote, “Mr. Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive U.S. weapons shipment.”

Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu have long been acquainted, although their relationship has not been known to be close or overly friendly. Last week, Biden said he didn’t know whether the Israeli leader was holding up a Mideast peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

RT News (Russia Today) app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russia said on Thursday (September 5, 2024) that new U.S. sanctions on its state-funded media RT were part of an “information campaign” ahead of November presidential elections, saying it was working on a response.

The U.S. on Wednesday indicted two RT employees and slapped its top editors with sanctions, accusing them of trying to influence the upcoming election.

The 10 individuals and two entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department included RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Elizaveta Brodskaia.

“It is an obvious operation, an information campaign… that was long prepared and that is needed ahead of the last stage of the electoral cycle,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told state news agency RIA Novosti.

She added that “of course, [a response] is being prepared”, warning that it will be harsh and that it will make “everyone shudder.”

Most of U.S. media have downsized or pulled out their staff from Russia after Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive, which was accompanied at home with a massive crackdown on dissent.

The U.S. also indicted two Russia-based RT employees, accusing them of funnelling $10 million to a Tennessee-based company that used social media influence to “create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.”

File picture of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Kremlin in Moscow
| Photo Credit: via Reuters

Observing that India has a longstanding relationship with Russia, the U.S. has said that it has encouraged New Delhi to “utilise” that relationship with Moscow and urge President Vladimir Putin to end the “illegal war” against Ukraine.

These remarks were made by State Department Spokesperson Mathew Miller at his daily news conference on Monday.

“India has a longstanding relationship with Russia. I think that’s well-known. And we have encouraged India to utilise that relationship with Russia, that longstanding relationship and the unique position that they have, to urge President Putin to end his illegal war and to find a just peace, a lasting peace to this conflict; to tell Putin to respect the UN Charter, to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” he said.

“That’s what we’ll continue to impress upon the Government of India, which is an important partner of ours when it comes to their relationship with Russia,” Mr. Miller said in response to a question.

Mr. Miller made similar remarks on July 9 soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi left Russia.

Mr. Modi was in Russia for two days from July 8-9 for the 22nd India-Russia annual summit that has been watched closely by the West amidst the raging Ukraine conflict.

This was the Prime Minister’s first visit to Russia since the war started between Moscow and Kyiv in 2022.

During his talks with Mr. Putin on July 9, Prime Minister Modi told President Putin that a solution to the Ukraine conflict is not possible on the battlefield and peace efforts do not succeed amid bombs and bullets.

India has been stoutly defending its “special and privileged strategic partnership” with Russia and maintained the momentum in the ties notwithstanding the Ukraine conflict.

India has not yet condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has consistently pitched for a resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.

The US expelled two Russian diplomats, weeks after Moscow ordered two Americans to leave, the latest tit-for-tat expulsions as relations continue to worsen between the two countries.

The move came after Russia ousted the two US diplomats for contacts with a former consular employee who had been accused of collecting sensitive information. The US has called those allegations baseless.

“The Department will not tolerate the Russian government’s pattern of harassment of our diplomats,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The unidentified Russian diplomats were given seven days to depart the US. That was the same amount of time given to US diplomats Jeffrey Sillin and David Bernstein, who were ordered to leave Russia last month.

Sillin and Bernstein were accused of contact with a former employee of the US consulate in Vladivostok who later pleaded guilty to gathering confidential information.

Russia and the US have engaged in a series of reciprocal expulsions dating to well before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)