Donald Trump reportedly spoke to world leaders like Vladimir Putin this week without the typical oversight of the US State Department and government interpreters.

The reason for this, as sources have explained The Washington Postis that Trump is “distrustful” of federal officials after a series of leaked transcripts emerged from conversations he had with world leaders during his first term in the White House.

The After reported its “standard procedure” for incoming presidents to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration, which the Trump transition team has so far bypassed. Officials familiar with conversations said Politics On Saturday, Trump’s team was expected to eventually sign an agreement with the agency, but that had not happened by the end of the weekend.

An insider told this After that world leaders have only called Trump directly for the time being.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said in a statement that world leaders have reached out to Trump to congratulate him and develop “stronger relationships” with the newly elected president.

Cheung’s statement added that the incoming president represents “global peace and stability,” a point Trump’s campaign frequently emphasized by pointing to the relative stability in the Middle East and Ukraine during his first term.

Trump and Putin are said to have spoken for the first time on Thursday after Trump’s comfortable election victory. Sources told After that Trump, speaking from Mar-a-Lago, encouraged the longtime Russian leader not to “escalate the war in Ukraine” and “reminded him of Washington’s significant military presence” alongside him in Europe.

A key promise of Trump’s campaign was to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, but he has not indicated how he plans to achieve that.

Among the others who called Trump this week was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During that 25-minute phone call, reports said Trump’s billionaire super-supporter Elon Musk was also on the line.

Ukrainian officials said this After they had no objection to Trump calling Putin. They reportedly understood that talks would take place between the two men about the yearslong war between Russia and Ukraine, which has killed or injured as many as 500,000 troops, U.S. officials revealed this summer.

In Ukraine, there were fears that a Trump presidency would mean the end of most US military aid to the country. But during his call this week Axios reported that Ukrainian officials found Trump’s words “a little more reassuring” than expected.

However, Trump’s election victory has yet to lead to an immediate slowdown in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. A CNN report on Sunday revealed that Russian and North Korean forces had “assembled a large force of tens of thousands of people” to carry out an attack on Ukrainian positions in Russia’s Kursk region – an operation expected in the will start in the coming days.