Has Putin picked up the phone to Donald Trump?

So, did they speak? How often? What about? The very coyness around the question of whether Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone – Trump says so, maybe more than once, while the Kremlin is neither confirming nor denying – suggests that pre-discussion discussions on the war in Ukraine are indeed already taking place.

General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the war, has stated that no peace plan will be unveiled at next weekend’s Munich Security Conference (the Davos of the security set). But in some ways that is disingenuous. As one Foreign Office staffer suggested, ‘It’s not necessarily the time and place for a public reveal, but it is a great place to float some ideas and see who thinks what.’

The particular challenge is that, for all the ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ rhetoric, this will be a negotiation process with three and a half sides: the Ukrainians, the Russians, the Americans, and, sadly making up the half of a side, the Europeans.