Vladimir Putin says he’s ready for talks with “real man” Donald Trump.
The Russian leader congratulated Trump for his 2024 presidential election victory Thursday and made a point of praising the new U.S. president-elect for his courage when a gunman tried to assassinate him at a July campaign rally.
“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a real man. I take this opportunity to congratulate him on his election,” said Putin at the Valdai discussion club in Sochi’s Russian Black Sea resort.
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During the campaign, Trump said he could settle the war between Ukraine and Russia in 24 hours and vowed to get Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the phone even before his inauguration in January.
“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” Trump said during his only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. “If I win, when I’m president-elect and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together. I know Zelensky very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, OK, they respect me, they don’t respect Biden.”
The Russian leader said he was ready for a conversation with Trump if the new administration wanted it.
“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,” Putin said in his first remarks since Trump’s election win.
But the Kremlin chief, 72, added: “I do not know what is going to happen now. I have no clue.”
“It is useless to put pressure on us,” he continued. “But we are always ready to negotiate with full consideration of mutual legitimate interests.”
An investigation into allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election found no evidence of any conspiracy, but speculation has persisted about Trump’s close relationship with Putin.
During the campaign, Kamala Harris warned that Putin would eat Trump for lunch, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov jokingly told the gathering: “Putin does not eat people.”
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