Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he is ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.
Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements and author of the 1987 book Trump: the Art of the Deal, has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, but has not yet given any details on how he might achieve that.
Putin, fielding questions on state TV during his annual question and answer session with Russians, told a reporter for a US news channel that he is ready to meet Trump, whom he said he had not spoken to for years.
“I don’t know when I’m going to see him. He isn’t saying anything about it. I haven’t talked to him in more than four years. I am ready for it, of course. Any time,” Putin said.
“If we ever have a meeting with President-elect Trump, I am sure we’ll have a lot to talk about,” he said, adding that Russia was ready for “negotiations and compromises”.
Asked what he might be able to offer Trump, Putin dismissed an assertion that Russia was in a weak position, saying that Russia had got much stronger since he ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022.
“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Putin said, after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine.
“Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight,” he said. “We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises.”
Reuters reported last month that Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv abandon its ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).
Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and is ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.
However, he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine’s legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to be only the Ukrainian parliament.
Zelensky, whose term was due to expire earlier this year but has been extended due to martial law, would need to be re-elected for Moscow to consider him a legitimate signatory to any deal to ensure it was legally watertight, said Putin.
Putin dismissed the idea of agreeing a temporary truce with Kyiv, saying that only a long-lasting peace deal would suffice.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia, which casts the conflict as a defensive special military operation designed to stop dangerous Nato expansion to the east, controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has taken several thousand square kilometres of territory this year.
Putin appeared to repeat his threat to strike Kyiv with Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik.
Asked by a military journalist if the weapon had any flaws, Putin suggested a “hi-tech duel” between the West and Russia to test his claims that it is impervious to air defences.
“Let them set some target to be hit, let’s say in Kyiv. They will concentrate there all their air defences. And we will launch an Oreshnik strike there and see what happens,” Putin proposed.
Asked if he would do anything differently if he could go back to February 2022, when he launched the Ukraine offensive, Putin said he only regretted doing it earlier.
“Knowing what is happening now, I would think that such a decision ... should have been taken earlier,” he said.
Putin is seen during his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow. (AFP)
