During boasts about Russia’s military achievements in his annual marathon televised news conference, Vladimir Putin says he is ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks on ending his war and has no conditions for starting discussions.
The Russian president told one reporter he was ready to meet Donald Trump, who he said he had not spoken to for years.
The US president-elect has vowed to swiftly end the Ukraine war, without giving any details on how he might achieve that.
Asked what he might be able to offer Mr Trump, Mr Putin dismissed an assertion that Russia was in a weak position.
“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Mr Putin said, after claiming 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. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises.”
Reuters reported last month that Mr Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Mr Trump but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv must abandon its ambitions to join Nato.
Mr Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including Volodymyr Zelensky.
But he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine’s legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to only be the Ukrainian parliament.
Mr 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 Mr Putin.
Any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement – never enacted – that was reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators at talks in Istanbul in the early weeks of the war, he added.
Some Ukrainian politicians regard that draft deal as akin to a capitulation which would have neutered Ukraine’s military and political ambitions.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Mr Putin said Kyiv’s troops would be forced out, but declined to say exactly when that would happen.
The war has transformed the Russian economy and Mr Putin said it was showing signs of overheating which was stoking worryingly high inflation. But he claimed growth was higher than many other economies such as Britain.
Asked by a BBC reporter if he’d looked after Russia, something that Boris Yeltsin had asked him to do before handing over the presidency at the end of 1999, Mr Putin said he had.
“We have moved back from the edge of the abyss,” Mr Putin said. “I have done everything to ensure that Russia is an independent and sovereign power that is able to make decisions in its own interests.”
Mr Putin also touted what he said was the invincibility of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, warning he was ready to organise another launch at Ukraine and see if Western air defence systems could shoot it down.
In Brussels, Mr Zelensky addressed this during a press conference at a European Council meeting, saying: “Do you think he is a sane person?”
Russia is making steady, if slow, advances in Ukraine, but has also suffered embarrassing setbacks. On Tuesday, Lt Gen Igor Kirillov was killed by a bomb planted outside his apartment building in Moscow – a brazen assassination claimed by Ukraine that brought the conflict once again to the streets of the Russian capital. Mr Putin described the killing as a “major blunder” by Russia’s security agencies.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
