The Kremlin said Wednesday that former US President Donald Trump’s government sent COVID-19 tests to Russia, but denied reports that it has spoken with President Vladimir Putin since he left office.
In his book “War”, American journalist Bob Woodward cited an anonymous Trump adviser who indicated that the former president could have spoken up to seven times with Putin since he left the White House in 2021, according to the summary of the book published by The Washington Post.
It details an incident in which Trump ordered an aide to leave his office at his Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago in early 2024 so he could have a private phone call with Putin.
“As for the calls, that is a lie,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. “There were no calls and no phone calls were made after Trump was no longer president.”
Also according to Woodward’s book, when Trump was still president in 2020 he sent COVID tests to Putin at a time when there were crippling shortages in the United States and around the world.
“As for testing, when the pandemic began, countries did not have enough equipment. And many countries then exchanged these gestures of support and sent each other shipments of various equipment they had,” Peskov commented.
In April 2020, the Trump administration accepted 60 tons of medical equipment from Russia.
“We sent a batch of artificial respiration devices, and several test devices arrived from the United States,” Peskov said. “The first ones worked very poorly. It was common practice at that time to exchange this type of support.”
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