Putin says Russia ready to compromise with Trump on Ukraine war

MOSCOW: 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.

Putin, fielding questions on state TV during his annual question and answer session with Russians, told a reporter of 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 Moscow had gotten much stronger since he ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022.

“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Putin said, after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine. 

Putin dismissed the idea of agreeing a temporary truce with Kyiv, saying only a long-lasting peace deal with Ukraine would suffice.

Any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the early weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, he added.

“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,” he said. 

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.

Reuters reported last month that Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv abandon its ambitions to join NATO.

Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

But he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine’s legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to be only the Ukrainian parliament.

Zelenskiy, 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.

Some Ukrainian politicians regard that draft deal as akin to a capitulation which would have neutered Ukraine’s military and political ambitions.