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Trump said he had probably spoken to 70 world leaders since his historic election – but so far Putin was not one of them
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday congratulated Donald Trump on winning the US election and said Moscow was ready for dialogue with the president-elect.
In his first public remarks since Trump’s historic win, Putin said Trump had acted like a real man during an assassination attempt on him while he was speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July.
“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a real man,” Putin said at the Valdai discussion club in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. “I take this opportunity to congratulate him on his election.”
Putin said remarks Trump had made during the election campaign about Ukraine and restoring relations with Russia deserved attention.
“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.
The incoming US president is “going to make a phone call to Putin as quickly as possible and tell Putin that he needs to stop the war, that the fighting has to stop, and that there has to be peace,” Kurt Volker, former US special representative for Ukraine negotiations, said.
Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu has claimed that the situation in the combat zone in Ukraine is not in Kyiv’s favour and that the West should accept this and negotiate an end to the conflict, the Interfax news agency reported.
“Now, when the situation in the theater of military operations is not in the favour of the Kyiv regime, the West is faced with a choice – to continue financing it and destroying the Ukrainian population or to recognise the current realities and start negotiating,” Shoigu was cited as telling a meeting of secretaries of Commonwealth of Independent States countries’ security councils in Moscow.
His comments came as Donald Trump became president-elect in the US for a second time, only months after vowing to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. His vice-president, JD Vance, has also talked about ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia to secure a deal.
Russian forces captured the village of Kreminna Balka in Ukraine‘s eastern Donetsk region, the Tass state news agency has claimed , citing the defence ministry.
The Independent could not independently confirm the battlefield report, though DeepState, a Ukraine-based organisation that tracks developments on the frontline, and is known to have close ties to the military, has updated it’s map to include Kreminna Balka in Russian-occupied territory.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia’s leadership remembered Donald Trump’s words about trying to resolve the Ukraine crisis even if he exaggerated the speed at which he could do it.
“If the new administration is going to look for peace, not for the continuation of the war, it will be better in comparison with the previous one,” Peskov told reporters.
Asked about Kamala Harris’s warning that Putin would eat Trump for lunch, Peskov said with a chuckle: “Putin does not eat people.”
The Kremlin said on Thursday it did not rule out the possibility that some form of contact could take place between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump before the latter’s inauguration in January, Interfax news agency reported
Putin has not yet commented on Trump’s election win but is due to speak and take questions at a conference later on Thursday.
The Kremlin reacted cautiously on Wednesday after Trump was elected US president, saying the US was still an unfriendly state and that only time would tell if Trump’s rhetoric on ending the Ukraine war translated into reality.
Germany will be able to provide most of the 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) pledged to Ukraine even if the 2025 budget cannot be approved on time following the collapse of the coalition government, sources from the budget committee told Reuters.
The funds are largely committed appropriations and can therefore be disbursed under provisional budget management if the budget is not passed, four sources said.
German aid to Ukraine was cut to 4 billion euros in 2025 from around 8 billion euros in 2024, according to the draft of the 2025 budget.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday congratulated Donald Trump on winning the U.S. election, praised him for showing courage when a gunman tried to assassinate him, and said Moscow was ready for dialogue with the Republican president-elect.
In his first public remarks since Trump’s win, Putin said Trump had acted like a real man during an assassination attempt on him while he was speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July.
“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a real man,” Putin said at the Valdai discussion club in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. “I take this opportunity to congratulate him on his election.”
Putin said remarks Trump had made during the election campaign about Ukraine and restoring relations with Russia deserved attention.
“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.
Fragments from downed Russian drones injured at least two people and damaged several buildings in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv overnight, city officials said on Thursday.
Ten buildings were damaged by drone debris, including a medical facility and a business centre, said Serhiy Popko, head of the city’s military administration.
The attack also caused a fire in a restaurant on the 33rd storey of a building in the wealthy central Pechersk district, and three residential buildings were also damaged in other areas, Popko said.
Photos posted by the city authorities showed burnt-out vehicles in ruined garages, and shattered windows and charred walls in another location.
Popko said more than 30 drones had been brought down in and around the capital in the latest overnight attack.
“Currently, there is no air raid alert in Kyiv. But there are drones in the airspace of Ukraine that may move towards Kyiv,” he warned in a message on the Telegram app on Thursday morning.
Air raid sirens sounded again in Kyiv shortly after 9.00 a.m. (0700 GMT).
Large-scale drone attacks have become a nightly danger for Kyiv residents over the past month as Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, increased the number of drones launched against Ukraine.
Russian shelling of Ukraine‘s frontline Donetsk region on Thursday killed two people and injured five more, the regional governor said.
A five-storey residential house in the town of Mykolaivka was hit in the attack and four more buildings were damaged, Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.
Read analysis from our foreign editor here.
Washington is by far Kyiv’s largest military backer – and any loss in support will mean more deaths on the front line, writes Chris Stevenson. But if a push to end the war does come from the White House, that also poses a problem for the Kremlin
Ukraine is not considering scenarios of the United States cutting its military aid and welcomes the Biden administration’s efforts to use all allocated aid as fast as possible, Ukraine‘s foreign ministry spokesman said.
“We are not looking into scenarios of the U.S. cutting its military aid because … we don’t think it is in the best interest of the United States to take such a step in the first place,” Heorhiy Tykhyi told journalists on Thursday.
“There are voices around the world who suppose that if you cut military supplies to Ukraine, Ukraine will be forced to negotiate … This is not true, this is simply not what is going to happen even if such a scenario is taken,” he added, saying such a move would lead to the war’s expansion instead.
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