How do presidential phone calls work and how often do Trump and Putin actually talk?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and American President Donald Trump will speak via encrypted lines.

Translators will attend, with Putin using Russian to negotiate despite speaking little English, the Telegraph reports.

In previous calls, they did not use video calls.

How often have they spoken?

After Trump's inauguration, the first publicly announced phone call between Trump and Putin was on February 12.

They spoke again on March 18. The Kremlin said they spoke for about two hours, one of Putin's longest phone calls.

Read too Vance expects Trump to ask Putin if he's serious about peace - and suggests US could pull out

Putin agreed to temporarily halt attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities – despite being accused of repeated violations of the agreement – ​​but refused to support a full 30-day ceasefire that Trump had hoped for.

What about informal contact?

The Kremlin said in March that there may have been more contact between Trump and Putin than the publicly announced calls.

In his 2024 book "War," Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward reported that Trump had direct conversations — up to seven times — with Putin after leaving the White House in 2021.

Asked if this was true in an interview with Bloomberg last year, Trump said: "If I did it, it's a smart thing."

The Kremlin denied Woodward's report. Reuters, The Washington Post and Axios separately reported that Trump and Putin spoke in early November. The Kremlin also denied those reports. /Telegraph/