Then, in response to Trump’s claim that during their phone call, he asked—in some accounts, warned —Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman denied that the two had spoken on the phone at all. (Putin issued his belated congratulations at a news conference.)

Donald Trump, who won the US presidential election last week, has meanwhile already urged his Russian counterpart not to escalate the war. This is what The Washington Post writes.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson criticized some Republicans for what he described as a "weird sort of homoerotic fascination with Putin."