BERLIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 19:  Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting to discuss the Ukrainian peace process at the German federal Chancellery on October 19, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, known as the Normandy Four, met in Berlin to discuss implementation of the peace plan known as the Minsk Protocol, a roadmap for resolving the conflict in Ukraine after Russian forces invaded in 2014 and annexed the peninsula of Crimea. The United States has threatened renewed sanctions on Russia if the country did not either implement the plan in the coming months or arrive at a plan on how to do so.  (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)
Putin: US-Russia ties worse under Trump
01:04 - Source: CNN

Story highlights

Trump and Putin will talk Tuesday afternoon

The call comes after Putin denounced the US strike against a Syrian government air base

Washington CNN  — 

President Donald Trump is set to speak by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, their first call since Russia denounced a US military strike against Syria last month.

Trump and Putin will talk Tuesday afternoon, a White House official said, in their third phone conversation since Trump took office. They last spoke following a terror attack in St. Petersburg, Russia, in early April, and also chatted a week after Trump’s inauguration in January.

The call comes after Putin characterized a US strike against a Syrian government air base “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law.” The US strike was in response to a suspected chemical attack by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a Putin ally, on his own people.

Questions also continue to swirl over ties between Trump and Russian cyberintrusions during the 2016 presidential campaign, which the FBI and multiple Capitol Hill committees are investigating.

Trump on Putin

Trump said during the presidential campaign that he views Putin as a “strong leader” and hoped to be able to build a good relationship with him.

Read: 80 times Turmp talked about Putin

“I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I’d rather do than have Russia friendly, as opposed to the way they are right now, so that we can go and knock out ISIS with other people,” he said in July 2016.

In January, Trump said that he believed that Russia was responsible for the hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016:

“I think it was Russia,” Trump said, adding that Putin “should not be doing it.”

“He won’t be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I am leading it than when other people have led it,” the then President-elect said.

In February, Trump told reporters he would “love to be able to get along with Russia:

“Now, you’ve had a lot of presidents that haven’t taken that tack. Look where we are now. Look where we are now. So, if I can – now, I love to negotiate things, I do it really well, and all that stuff. But – but it’s possible I won’t be able to get along with Putin.”

The Kremlin’s statement after the US strike in Syria appeared pessimistic, saying the intervention had “dealt a serious blow to Russian-US relations, which are already in a poor state.”