WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump has secretly spoken with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as many as seven times since leaving office, even as he was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

The book, titled “War” and scheduled to be published next week, describes a scene in early 2024 at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Florida, when the former president ordered an aide out of his office so he could conduct a phone call with Putin. The aide said the two might have spoken a half-dozen other times since Trump left the White House.

The book also reports that Trump, while still in office early during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, secretly sent Putin what were then rare Abbott Point of Care test machines for the Russian leader’s personal use. Putin, who has been described as particularly anxious about being infected at the time, urged Trump to not publicly reveal the gesture because it could damage the U.S. president politically. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Putin reportedly told him.

The disclosures raise new questions about Trump’s relationship with Putin just weeks before an election that will determine whether the former president will reclaim the White House. A copy of the book was obtained by The New York Times. The Washington Post, where Woodward has worked for more than half a century, and CNN, where he often appears as a commentator, also reported on the book Tuesday.

Woodward, who rose to fame with his Watergate reporting and regularly produces bestselling books with explosive reporting based on access to high-level sources, attributed his account of the continuing communications between Trump and Putin to a single Trump aide who is not named in the book. The aide offered no specific details beyond saying there had been what Woodward characterized as “maybe as many as seven” contacts. There was no immediate independent confirmation Tuesday.

Trump’s campaign dismissed Woodward’s book by assailing the author with typically personal insults — “a total sleazebag” who is “slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality” — without addressing any of the specifics reported in it.

“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, said in the statement.

The Kremlin likewise denied the reporting in Woodward’s book about conversations between Trump and Putin and the provision of COVID-19 tests.

“This is not true,” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson, said in a text message. “It’s a typical bogus story in the context of the pre-election political campaign.”

But Trump’s affinity for the master of the Kremlin has long baffled even his own appointees, prompted investigations and troubled Republican national security specialists.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Putin had ordered the Russian government to intervene in the 2016 election to help Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a conclusion that Trump rejected, suggesting that he believed Putin’s denial. While special counsel Robert Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy that could be proved in court, he documented an unusual number of contacts between Russia and people in Trump’s circle during that campaign.

Since leaving office, Trump has continued to publicly praise Putin.

He called the Russian leader a “genius” when Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022 and since then has refused to say that Ukraine should win the war. He has criticized U.S. aid to Ukraine and leaned on congressional Republicans not to approve more assistance. He has boasted that — without offering any details — if he wins he will negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours and do so even before the inauguration.

Former presidents meet with foreign counterparts after leaving office from time to time.

Trump has hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and others at Mar-a-Lago. But those meetings were publicly known, and Trump posed for photos with his guests.

It would be unusual for a former president to privately talk with a top U.S. adversary like Putin without clearing it with the current administration — especially at a time when the United States and Russia are on opposite sides of a war in Europe. Biden has not spoken with Putin since the invasion of Ukraine.