Putin congratulates ‘courageous’ Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Donald Trump on his electoral victory and confirmed that he is ready to talk with the US president-elect. Putin hailed Trump’s “courageous” response to the attempt to assassinate him in July.
Speaking at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Thursday, Putin said that he wished to “offer my congratulations on [Trump’s] election as president of the United States.”
Putin noted that Trump has expressed a desire to end the Ukraine conflict, and that such statements “deserve attention, at the very least.”
The Russian president then paid tribute to Trump’s actions during an attempt on his life in Pennsylvania this summer, when then-candidate Trump rose to his feet and raised his fist after a bullet grazed his ear.
“I was impressed. He’s a courageous person,” Putin said. “A person shows their true color in these emergencies, and I think he acquitted himself admirably and in a valiant fashion as a man.”
Hours earlier, the Kremlin denied reports that Putin had sent a private congratulatory message to Trump, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that the US is “an unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in the war against us.”
However, Putin said that he is open to receiving a phone call from Trump, adding that “it wouldn’t be beneath me to call him myself.”
Trump has repeatedly promised to bring the Ukraine conflict to a swift end, although he has offered little explanation as to how he would achieve this.
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and unnamed aides quoted in American media have suggested that Kiev could abandon its territorial claims and hopes of NATO membership in exchange for peace, with the conflict frozen along the current line of contact.
Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved.
Should Trump push to freeze the conflict and deny NATO membership to Ukraine, and should Putin accept this plan, “the likelihood that [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky will refuse is close to zero,” a source close to Zelensky told Ukrainian media earlier on Thursday.
Ukraine “is not in a position to refuse its main partner, without whose support it will be almost impossible to continue the war,” the source said.
