“I had a very good call with President Putin. We had a lot of people on the line from our side, from his side,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in his March 9 Monday afternoon press conference. He reported that he and the Russian President discussed Ukraine and the Middle East, saying that he considered the call to have been positive with regard to both of those crises (albeit with a passing complaint about Putin not settling the Ukraine conflict). His comment was brief: