Ready to meet Trump over Ukraine negotiations: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was 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 was ready to meet Trump, whom he said he had not spoken to for years.

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.

“Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight.

We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises.” Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy, whose term has technically expired but who has delayed an election because of the war, 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.

‘Pulled back Russia from edge of abyss’

President Vladimir Putin said he had pulled Russia back from the edge of the abyss after the chaos which accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, and had built the country into a sovereign power able to stand up for itself. He admitted there was inflation but said that Russian growth rates outstripped those of Britain.