Vladimir Putin congratulates ‘courageous’ Donald Trump on US election win
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”.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2018. Pic: AP
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”.
Read more:
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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.”
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‘Putin doesn’t 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.
World
Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sacked for ethics violation after leaked phone call
Thailand’s prime minister has been sacked after a leaked phone call with a senior Cambodian politician caused outrage.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was Thailand’s youngest PM, has been dismissed from office by the country’s Constitutional Court after only a year in power.
The court found Ms Shinawatra, 39, violated ethics in a leaked June telephone call, during which she appeared to kowtow to Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen as the bordering countries were on the verge of an armed conflict.
She also criticised a Thai army commander – a taboo move in a country where the military is extremely influential.
Fighting erupted weeks later and lasted five days. At least 35 people were killed and more than 260,000 were displaced.
Ms Shinawatra, who was new to politics when she took office in August last year, apologised over the call and said she was trying to avert a war. She was suspended in July.
Ms Shinawatra arriving at Government House in Bangkok ahead of the verdict on Friday. Pic: Reuters
She is now the fifth Thai PM from, or backed by, the billionaire Shinawatra family to be removed by the military or the judiciary in 17 years, amid a battle for power between the country’s warring elites.
The ruling thrusts Thailand into more political uncertainty at a time of public unease over stalled reforms and a stuttering economy.
Speaking after the court’s decision, the exiting PM said “all sides” in Thai politics now “have to work together to build political stability and to ensure that there won’t be another turning point again”.
The focus will now shift to who will replace Ms Shinawatra.
Her influential, billionaire father, Thaksin Shinawatra, who also once served as Thailand’s PM, is expected to be at the heart of a flurry of bargaining to keep the ruling Pheu Thai party in power.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more:
What happened between Thailand and Cambodia
Drug epidemic sweeps Southeast Asia
The leader of the main opposition People’s Party has called for the next prime minister to dissolve parliament once they are installed.
The deputy PM, Phumtham Wechayachai, and the current cabinet will act as government caretakers until a new leader is elected by parliament. There is no time limit on when that must take place.
After all those raised hopes of peace, Ukraine has been hit by the second-worst night of Russian air attacks since the war began.
So much for diplomacy, despite the Alaska summit, then the Washington DC meeting.
The Kremlin says it was aiming at military targets, but yet again, the pictures tell a very different story.
Follow latest: UK summons Putin’s ambassador
Firefighters work at the site of a burning building after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
One civilian building after another was hit, more than a dozen people were killed, and British Council and EU buildings were also damaged.
So what’s going on? Why is Vladimir Putin doing it?
Because he can.
The Russian president thinks he’s winning this war, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s using diplomacy to play for time while he carries on beating down the Ukrainians’ will to win.
And at the moment, no one is stopping him
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At least 14 killed in Kyiv attack
Ukraine is hitting back, particularly at Russia‘s oil installations, more of them going up in thick black smoke, after being hit by long-range Ukrainian drones.
It is taking a heavy toll on Putin’s ‘Achilles heel’, but on its own, analysts don’t expect it will be enough to persuade him to end this war.
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British Council building hit in Kyiv
The West can wring its hands in condemnation.
But it’s divided between Europe that wants a ceasefire and much more severe sanctions, and Donald Trump, who, it seems, does not – strangely always willing to sympathise with the Russians more than Ukraine.
He’s back to blaming Ukraine for starting the war, saying earlier in the week that Kyiv should not have got into a war it had no chance of winning.
It is a grotesque perversion of history. Ukraine, of course, had no choice but to fight to defend itself when it was invaded in an act of unprovoked aggression.
Every time the US president has condemned Russia for these kinds of attacks, he has never followed through and done nothing to punish them.
Rescue workers carry an injured woman after a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
More worryingly for the Ukrainians, the Russians are getting the upper hand in the drones war, taking Iranian technology and souping it up into faster-moving drones that the Ukrainians are having increasing difficulty bringing down.
They expect as many as a thousand drones a night coming their way by the winter, and many, many more innocents to die.
Next week, Putin will join Chinese and North Korean leaders in a summit in Beijing, both supporting his war in Ukraine.
(L-R) Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Pics: Reuters
Read more from Dominic Waghorn:
Ukrainians warn they’re in danger of losing drone arms race
We are further away from peace now than we were two weeks ago
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
A war that began as one man’s mad idea has, in three and a half years, metastasised into a titanic struggle between east and west, fought increasingly with machines in a dystopian evolution of war.
If Mr Trump is not prepared to use his power to bring this war to an end, what will another three and a half years of his presidency bring?
It is a chilling question.
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