US media reports say US President-elect Donald Trump has held phone talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Trump won presidential election.

A major US newspaper, The Washington Post, broke the news on November 10, quoting several people familiar with the matter.

It quoted one as saying Trump used the call to advise Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine.  The paper also cited some sources as saying the two men discussed “the goal of peace on the European continent.”

It reported that the sources said Trump expressed “an interest in follow-up conversations on 'the resolution of Ukraine's war soon.”

The Guardian reports that according to one former US official who was familiar with the call and spoke to The Washington Post, Trump likely does not want to begin his second presidential term with an escalation in the Ukraine war, “giving him incentive to want to keep the war from worsening.”

During the election campaign, Donald Trump said he would find a solution to end the war “within a day”, but did not explain how he would do so.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS that Biden has invited Trump to come to the Oval Office on Wednesday, and on Sunday.   

“President Biden will have the opportunity over the next 70 days to make the case to the Congress and to the incoming administration that the United States should not walk away from Ukraine, that walking away from Ukraine means more instability in Europe,” Sullivan was cited as saying.

Washington has provided tens of billions of dollars’ worth of US military and economic aid to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022, funding that Trump has repeatedly criticized and rallied against with other Republican lawmakers.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry disputed a claim in The Washington Post article that Kyiv was informed of the call and did not object to the conversation taking place.

“Reports that the Ukrainian side was informed in advance of the alleged call are false.  Subsequently, Ukraine could not have endorsed or opposed the call,” foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told Reuters.

According to The Guardian, the Kremlin said on Friday that Putin was ready to discuss Ukraine with Trump but that it did not mean that he was willing to alter Moscow’s demands.