By Vladimir Soldatkin and Guy Faulconbridge
SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) -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.
Trump said during campaigning that he could bring peace in Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, but has given few details on how he would seek to end the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two.
The 72-year-old Kremlin chief gave just one note of caution: "I do not know what is going to happen now. I have no clue."
When pressed by a questioner what he would do if Trump called to suggest a meeting, Putin said he was ready to resume contacts if a Trump administration wanted that, and was ready for discussions with Trump.
Russia and Trump have repeatedly dismissed as nonsense some claims in Western media that Trump was a sort of Russian agent of influence. Russian officials say that during his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump was tough on Russia.
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but said in a 2019 report that he found no evidence of conspiracy.
Moscow has also repeatedly denied U.S. assertions that Russia meddled in the 2024 and other presidential elections and had spread disinformation in an attempt to sow chaos.
WAR?
The 2-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its final - most dangerous - phase after Moscow's forces advance at their fastest pace since the early weeks of the conflict and the West ponders how the war will end.
Putin on June 14 set out his terms for an end to the war: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all of the territory of four regions claimed by Russia.
Russia controls Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas - a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Speaking for several hours on Thursday, Putin railed against the "adventurism" of Western leaders whom he accused of pushing the world to a "dangerous line" by seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine.
"It is useless to put pressure on us. But we are always ready to negotiate with full consideration of mutual legitimate interests," Putin said, just seconds after scolding the West for promising Ukraine and Georgia eventual NATO membership in 2008.
He said that the West had never accepted Russia as an equal partner since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, treating it as a defeated power and enlarging the U.S.-led NATO military alliance eastwards towards Russia.
Russia, Putin said, was ready to restore relations with the United States but the ball was in Washington's court. Putin also said that China was Russia's "ally".
Asked about Kamala Harris' warning that Putin would eat Trump for lunch, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said with a chuckle: "Putin does not eat people."