Russia ready to work with Trump: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with Donald Trump on ending the war and that Russian forces were moving towards achieving their primary goals on the battlefield.

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.

Putin said that Russia had not been defeated in Syria and that Moscow had made proposals to the new rulers in Damascus to maintain Russia's military bases there.

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.

Russia, he said, had made proposals to Syria's new rulers about Russia's military bases there and most people that Moscow had spoken to on the issue favoured them staying.

Asked about the fate of missing US reporter Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012, Putin said he planned to speak to former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the new leaders of Syria about the issue. Tice's family wrote to Putin asking for his help in finding Tice.

Putin also touted what he said was the invincibility of the "Oreshnik" hypersonic missile which Russia has already test-fired at a Ukrainian military factory, saying he was ready to organise another launch at Ukraine and see if Western air defence systems could shoot it down.

"Let them determine some target for destruction, say in Kyiv, concentrate all their air defence and missile defence forces there, and we will strike there with Oreshnik and see what happens. We are ready for such an experiment, but is the other side ready?" he said.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Russia, which controls around a fifth of Ukraine, has taken several thousand square kilometres of territory in Ukraine this year, taking village after village and threatening strategically important cities such as Pokrovsk, a major road and rail hub.