Capt. Jereal Dorsey, a spokesman for General Brown, said in a statement after he was approached by a reporter about the call that “at the request of General Gerasimov, General Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call.”
The two men “discussed a number of global and regional security issues, to include the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” Captain Dorsey said.
The call came at a tense time. Mr. Putin had escalated an already tense showdown with the West, asserting that Russia had the right to strike the military facilities of countries “that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
“The regional conflict in Ukraine, previously provoked by the West, has acquired elements of a global character,” Mr. Putin said in a rare address to the nation at the time. “We are developing intermediate- and shorter-range missiles as a response to U.S. plans to produce and deploy intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.”
Mr. Putin’s comments came as Mr. Biden loosened restrictions that he had kept in place for much of the war. He authorized the use of those missiles, known as ATACMS, for
, deeper into Russia, and Ukraine has used them, including in a strike last month on an ammunition depot in southwestern Russia, according to Ukrainian officials.