Vladimir Putin has congratulated Donald Trump on winning the US election, and expressed admiration for the way Trump reacted to an assassination attempt during the campaign. He also said he was ready for dialogue with Trump, a prospect which will cause disquiet in Kyiv and many other European capitals.
Putin gave his first public remarks on Trump’s win on Thursday evening during a discussion forum in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. His words seemed calibrated to appeal to the president-elect’s well-documented fondness for flattery.
“He turned out to be a courageous person,” said Putin, referencing Trump’s conduct after a gunman fired shots at him during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on 14 July. “People show who they are in extraordinary circumstances. This is where a person reveals himself. And he showed himself, in my opinion, in a very correct manner, courageously. Like a man.”
Putin also claimed Trump had been “hounded by all sides” during the campaign, another line that is likely to resonate well with Trump, and offered his congratulations on the victory. He highlighted Trump’s remarks on Ukraine and Russia. “What was said about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to bring about the end of the Ukrainian crisis in my opinion this deserves attention at least,” said Putin.
Putin said he was “ready” for dialogue with Trump, criticising other world leaders who “used to call him every week” but have now stopped doing so. Trump, for his part, said in an interview with NBC on Thursday that Putin was not among the dozens of world leaders with whom he had already spoken, but that he expected a call soon. “I think we’ll speak,” said Trump.
Putin claimed during the campaign that he favoured a Kamala Harris victory. But that endorsement, accompanied by a wry smile, was hard to take seriously. Moscow has long valued the chaos factor embodied by Trump, and Russian authorities were accused of wide-ranging and intensive efforts to intervene in the 2016 on behalf of Trump.
This time around, Putin will have been paying close attention to the statements from Trump and his running mate JD Vance on the need to stop military aid to Ukraine. During the campaign, Trump claimed he could bring peace to Ukraine “within 24 hours” but has given few details, leading to fears in other Nato capitals that his plan may involve simply ordering Ukraine to surrender to Russia.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that one idea floated by the Trump team is to freeze the frontlines in their current place and force Kyiv to give up any talk of Ukraine’s Nato membership for 20 years. In return, the US would continue to provide Ukraine with weapons, to deter further Russian attacks, the newspaper reported, citing “people close to the president-elect”.
On Thursday, in a first effort to convince Donald Trump to keep backing Kyiv, Nato chief Mark Rutte said that North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine posed a direct threat to the United States.
Nato allies say keeping Kyiv in the fight against Moscow is key to both European and American security, and Rutte sought to join the dots for Trump between the conflict and Washington’s major foes elsewhere.
“What we see more and more is that North Korea, Iran, China and of course Russia are working together, working together against Ukraine,” Rutte told reporters at a European leaders’ meeting in Budapest.
“At the same time, Russia has to pay for this, and one of the things they are doing is delivering technology to North Korea, which is now threatening in future the mainland of the US, continental Europe,” he warned.
When Trump and Harris clashed over Ukraine during the only televised debate of the campaign between the two contenders, Harris told Trump that Putin “would eat you for lunch”. Asked about the remarks on Thursday, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, laughed, and said: “Putin does not eat people.”
After nearly three years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many believe that some kind of negotiations will need to take place in the coming months, as exhaustion and battlefield losses make it hard for Kyiv to fight on indefinitely. This may become particularly acute if Trump curtails aid to Ukraine.
Russia is currently advancing on the battlefield, and despite occasional claims that it is ready for talks, Moscow has shown little serious interest in any kind of negotiated deal that is not a Ukrainian capitulation.
Putin on Thursday reiterated Russia’s demands for a deal, including that Ukraine should remain neutral and give up all ambition for Nato integration. Otherwise, said Putin, it would be “constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation”.
However, Putin’s idea of neutrality does not extend to the parts of Ukraine occupied and annexed by Russia over the past decade. Asked about the future borders of Ukraine, Putin said they should be “in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories”, suggesting Moscow wants to keep hold of the territories it has seized.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Thursday that calls for a ceasefire were “dangerous” and “irresponsible”, as they offered no guarantee of security for Ukraine. “There must be a clear plan,” he said, speaking after a summit of European leaders in Budapest.