Vladimir Putin has hailed Donald Trump as “courageous” for his response to an assassination attempt as he congratulated the next US president.

Mr Trump won a decisive victory in the 2024 election – comfortably clearing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency and clinching five battleground states.

Throughout his campaign, Mr Trump said he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine in just 24 hours – without explaining how he would do so.

Speaking in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Thursday, the Russian leader also noted the president-elect’s “desire to restore relations,” but added he has “no idea” what to expect from Mr Trump’s second term in office.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already congratulated the Republican on his win, he raised concerns that his plan to end the war with Russia quickly means “losses for Ukraine”.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump told Sky’s partner network NBC News that he has not spoken to Mr Putin yet, but said “I would think that we’ll speak”.

After giving a speech at an international forum in Sochi, Mr Putin said Mr Trump’s “behaviour at the time of the attempt on his life made an impression on me”.

“He turned out to be a courageous man,” the Russian president said. “And it’s not just about the raised hand and the call to fight for his and their common ideals…

“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a man.”

Mr Putin said he felt Mr Trump was “hounded from all sides” when he was last president, and added: “I do not know what is going to happen now.

“I have no clue. For him, this is his last term. What he will do, these are questions for him.”

The Russian president added what Mr Trump has said “about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis, in my opinion, deserves attention at least”.

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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sky News that if the new Trump administration seeks peace rather than “continuation of war” then it will “be better in comparison with the previous one”.

But when asked about Kamala Harris’s debate suggestion that Mr Putin will “eat Donald Trump for lunch”, he bizarrely responded: “Vladimir Putin does not eat people.”

It came as the president-elect told NBC News that he has spoken to about 70 world leaders after winning the 2024 election, but not Mr Putin.

Mr Trump said in a phone interview: “Well, I would think that [he and Mr Putin] will speak. I would certainly think so.”

He added he is not aware of any plans to speak to the Russian leader.

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It comes as Mr Zelenskyy said in Budapest on Thursday he was not aware of any details of Mr Trump’s plan to end the Ukraine war quickly – but fears a quick resolution would mean major concessions for Kyiv.

“If it’s just fast, it means losses for Ukraine,” he said. “I just don’t yet understand how this could be in any other way. Maybe we do not know something, do not see.”

Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy met at Trump Tower in New York in September – days after the future president complained at a rally that “we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal” to end the war.

Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon have killed 40 people, according to the country’s health ministry.

The strikes also wounded 53 more people around the eastern city of Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley on Wednesday, as Israel’s operation against the Hezbollah militant group continues.

The Israeli military has not commented.

More than 3,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon in the past year, but most deaths have happened over the past six weeks as violence between the Iran-backed militants and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) escalated.

Late on Wednesday and earlier on Thursday, further strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate several locations.

This morning, one large airstrike hit a site next to Lebanon’s only international airport. Israel said there were Hezbollah facilities there, without giving more details.

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Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a speech aired on Wednesday that the Lebanese militant group is open for ceasefire negotiations only once “the enemy stops its aggression”.

More attacks in northern Gaza

Meanwhile, what has been a year-long relentless military campaign on the besieged enclave of Gaza raged on with more attacks on the north.

Israel’s ground operation in the region – said to be aimed at stopping Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping – has extended to a town that has been heavily bombed since the earliest days of the war.

The military said in a statement on Thursday that “troops started to operate” in the area of Beit Lahiya after intelligence indicated the presence of militants there.

Israel launched another major offensive in nearby Jabaliya, a decades-old urban refugee camp, in early October.

It has sharply restricted the amount of aid entering northern Gaza and ordered a full evacuation.

Tens of thousands have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest mass displacement of the war.

‘Absolute despair’

The war in Gaza, launched on 8 October last year following Hamas’s attack into southern Israel, has so far claimed the lives of more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

Israel has been criticised by the Norwegian Refugee Council after its secretary general, Jan Egeland, visited northern and central Gaza and said the IDF’s campaign is “in no way a lawful” response to the 7 October attacks last year – when 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel and 250 were taken hostage by Hamas.

Mr Egeland described the situation as “worse than anything I could imagine as a long-time aid worker”.

“What I saw and heard in the north of Gaza was a population pushed beyond breaking point,” he added.

“Families torn apart, men and boys detained and separated from their loved ones, and families unable to even bury their dead. Some have gone days without food, drinking water is nowhere to be found.

“It is scene after scene of absolute despair.”

Mr Egeland continued: “The families, widows and children I have spoken to are enduring suffering almost unparalleled anywhere in recent history.

“There is no possible justification for continued war and destruction. To avert tens of thousands of additional innocent lives lost, we need an immediate cease-fire, release of the hostages and those arbitrarily detained and the start of a real peace process.”

The UK has sanctioned a Russian military officer accused of helping poison former double agent Sergei Skripal with novichok in Salisbury.

The Foreign Office has imposed 56 new sanctions on people and entities linked to Russia, including those in the Wagner mercenary group that operates unofficially on Vladimir Putin’s behalf, and companies based in China, Turkey and central Asia supplying parts to Russia.

Denis Sergeev, who the Met Police charged over the attempted murder of double agent Mr Skripal, has been sanctioned under the chemical weapons sanctions regime.

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“Sergeev provided support in the preparation and use of the chemical weapon novichok in Salisbury…and provided a coordinating role in London on the weekend of the attack,” the Foreign Office said.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in March 2018.

Police said nerve agent novichok was applied to the front door of his home.

Three Russians, who police said are GRU military intelligence officers, have been charged in absentia over the incident.

Sergeev was the last to be charged after police said he was acting under the alias Sergey Fedotov.

A public inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, a woman unwittingly killed after coming across a sample perfume bottle containing novichok, heard Mr Skripal believed Mr Putin had ordered the attack on him.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected British accusations the Kremlin was involved.

The inquiry heard the amount of novichok in the perfume bottle was enough to kill thousands of people.

Also included in the latest sanctions round are companies supplying Russia with military equipment being used in its war against Ukraine.

Ten companies based in China, and a handful from Turkey, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, are on the list for supplying and producing machine tools, microelectronics and components for drones used by Russia in Ukraine.

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Russian-based mercenary groups operating in sub-Saharan Africa with links to the Kremlin are also on the list.

The Foreign Office said they have threatened peace and security in Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic, and have committed widespread human rights abuses across Africa.

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Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “Today’s measures will continue to push back on the Kremlin’s corrosive foreign policy, undermining Russia’s attempts to foster instability across Africa and disrupting the supply of vital equipment for Putin’s war machine.

“And smashing the illicit international networks that Russia has worked so hard to forge.

“Putin is nearly 1,000 days into a war he thought would only take a few. He will fail and I will continue to bear down on the Kremlin and support the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom.”