Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu on Friday, which marked the first time the two sides have spoken since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Top U.S. defense officials had their efforts to speak with their counterparts in Russia rebuffed until Friday's call. Austin and Shoygu last spoke on Feb. 18, less than a week before the invasion.

SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW RUSSIAN SHIP TRYING TO DODGE UKRAINIAN MISSILES

"On May 13, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu for the first time since Feb. 18. Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement to reporters.

A senior U.S. defense official described the roughly hourlong call as “professional” and said the Pentagon's takeaway “was that the message was received with respect to keeping the lines open."

Kirby said earlier this month that it had been “many weeks” since the Pentagon “attempted another communication with Minister Shoygu.”

"There’ll be a gap in times of effort, and that doesn’t mean it’s not still consistent effort,” the official explained. "It's not like we had a weekly timer on there. And then we were calling — you know, making an attempt every Tuesday or something like that. So both can be true that there was a period of time where we didn’t reach out, but that doesn’t mean it was for a lack of interest in doing it.”

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The spokesperson for Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Washington Examiner in early May that they too hadn’t tried to set up a call between him and his Russian counterpart, Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, in “several weeks.”

A defense official told the Washington Examiner the chairman is expected to reach out to his counterpart soon.