White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt ripped into press coverage of Donald Trump’s Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

She also confirmed that Russia‘s Vladimir Putin agreed to a one-on-one meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, saying it’s a major step toward a Trump-brokered peace deal.

Leavitt criticized the media’s coverage of the president’s summit with Putin in Alaska on Friday and White House talks with Zelensky and European leaders on Monday.

The president excused himself after a meeting with Zelensky and the other world leaders on Monday to call Putin to fill him in on progress.  

The president revealed Tuesday morning in an interview on Fox & Friends that he felt it would be ‘disrespectful’ to make the call in the middle of the meeting with Zelensky and the European leaders.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and others visited the White House to try and broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine.

But Leavitt turned on a reporter from the New York Times who questioned why the president didn’t take the call with Putin in the same room with the other leaders.

‘If the point is to get everybody on the same page, why wouldn’t Trump just take the call from Putin while the other leaders were in the room?’ asked New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh.

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room after President Donald Trump’s flurry of meetings with world leaders

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White House reporters question press secretary Karoline Leavitt about details of the president’s meetings with world leaders and Vladimir Putin

‘So it would be disrespectful to do that. Why is it disrespectful?’ he asked.

‘With all due respect, only a reporter from the New York Times would ask a question like that, Sean,’ Leavitt shot back.

Leavitt also revealed that Putin had officially agreed to a one-on-one meeting with Zelensky after his conversations with Trump.

The announcement was a welcome clarification from the White House as the Kremlin has remained elusive about exactly what Putin promised the president of the United States.

When a reporter asked to confirm Putin’s ‘promise’ to do a meeting with Zelensky in the coming weeks, Leavitt replied, ‘He has, and I just answered that question for you.’

Trump indicated on social media Monday night that he spoke with Putin and the pair of them agreed to begin the process to set up a bilateral meeting.

‘At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelensky,’ the president wrote.

The Russians were less transparent.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to slow-walk the timing of the meeting in an interview, describing the process as ‘step by step, gradually, starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary stages.’

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump shake hands during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC

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U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands after meeting to discuss peace in Ukraine

Leavitt scolded the press for their negative coverage of the president’s meeting with Putin, arguing it was so ‘highly productive’ that it prompted Zelensky and other world leaders to fly to Washington, D.C., immediately to discuss the details.

She said that Trump ‘learned a lot’ during his meeting with Putin and the importance of open dialog between both the Ukrainians and the Russians.

Leavitt excoriated former President Joe Biden for pushing an ‘America last foreign policy’ that did not leave the option for peace open in the conflict.

‘President Trump rejected that failed approach, and instead, over the last seven months, has relentlessly pursued peace throughout his second term,’ she said.

The president said earlier Monday, he wanted Putin and Zelensky to have a bilateral meeting to solve the war and make assurances to bring about peace, and even rebuild a relationship with each other to negotiate a peace.

‘It takes, in this case, two to tango, they have to have a relationship otherwise we’re just wasting our time,’ he said.