(LifeSiteNews) — In a speech on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated President Donald Trump on his election victory on Tuesday and confirmed he was open to speaking with the new president-elect directly. Putin also referred to Trump as “courageous” based on his immediate response to the assassination attempt against him in July.
The Russian president made his remarks during an address at the Valdai Discussion Club, a conference held in the southern Black Sea resort town of Sochi, according to Russia Today.
Putin said he wished to “offer my congratulations on (Trump’s) election as president of the United States,” and noted the American president-elect has expressed a desire to end the conflict in Ukraine, and that such statements “deserve attention, at the very least.”
Reflecting on Trump’s immediate reaction to the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania this summer, when after having his ear grazed by a bullet he rose to his feet and raised his fist, Putin said, “I was impressed. He’s a courageous person.”
“A person shows their true color in these emergencies, and I think he acquitted himself admirably and in a valiant fashion as a man,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied reports that Putin had sent any private congratulatory messages to Trump, saying he had “no knowledge” of any such communication and reminded members of the press, “we are talking about an unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in the war against us.”
Despite such pronounced tensions, Putin said that he is open to receiving a phone call from Trump, adding that “it wouldn’t be beneath me to call him myself.”
Decades of provocations from the West, NATO expansion, 2014 coup d’état
Since at least as early as May 2023, Trump positioned himself, once again, as the peace candidate promising to have the war in Ukraine “settled in one day, in 24 hours” of his inauguration. And later he often stated he “will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled … before I even arrive at the Oval Office,” and this will be “very easy.”
As has been reported elsewhere, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has raised tensions with the Russian Federation by expanding eastward, adding new nations to the alliance even to the border of Russia in 2004 with the recognized membership of the three Baltic states.
READ: ‘Monumental provocation’: How US and international policy-makers deliberately baited Putin to war
In 2008, the NATO alliance threatened to cross “the brightest of all redlines” for Russia in declaring that Ukraine would become a member of NATO, and in 2014, the U.S. facilitated a coup d’état of the democratically elected government installing another that was hostile to Russia.
This new American-backed government in Kiev was considered illegitimate by the ethnic Russian populations in the eastern and southern portions of the country. In Crimea, the citizens welcomed a reunification with Russia, and in the east, these communities declared independence triggering an aggressive war against them by the government in Kiev.
A plan by U.S. neoconservatives for even a direct war with Russia was further manifested during the 2016 U.S. presidential election when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ran on a policy of instituting a “no-fly zone” over Syria that, by all reasonable accounts, would have brought about a direct confrontation with Russia.
At the time, Trump warned such a policy would “lead to World War III,” and having thereafter won the presidency, the neo-conservatives’ planned war against Russia was postponed for four years until the Biden administration was installed into power in January 2021.
Biden administration implements cascade of aggressive provocations against Russia, fuels proxy war
In March 2021, the Biden regime with Kiev’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy government began a series of precipitating incitements aimed at provoking the Russian invasion. On St. Patrick’s Day, Biden called Putin “a killer” with no soul. Two days later, Ukraine announced the approval of a strategy “aimed at retaking Crimea,” which Russia received as an effective declaration of war.
After the U.S. government’s approval of Ukraine’s aggressive strategy, Putin ordered the Russian military to amass thousands of troops with necessary invasion equipment to their border with Ukraine, and sufficient defensive forces to take position in Crimea.
With Russia having taken this offensive posture, Zelenskyy pressed further with provocation in July, calling for the U.S. military to engage Russia on their behalf, and then, soon after, he announced joint military exercises in Ukraine.
In November, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, crossing once more what they knew to be “the brightest of all redlines” for the Russian state, affirming Ukraine’s right to join NATO with a pledge of ongoing defense and security support.
In December 2021, the Biden administration and NATO rejected two draft Russian agreements demanding the disavowal of their decision to welcome Ukraine into the alliance. In January and February, Kiev intensified bombing of the ethnic Russian Donbass region that necessitated an evacuation of civilians into Russia.
And within this context, with Russian troops massed on the border of their country, instead of making efforts for peace, Zelenskyy chose further provocation in an address to the Munich Security Conference, where he provided a rationale and expressed a desire for his nation to acquire nuclear weapons.
Putin responded in February by recognizing Luhansk and Donetsk of the Donbass region as sovereign nations, entering into a Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance with them, and initiating the “special military operation” in defense of these ethnic Russian communities escalating the war that began in 2014.
Putin requires Ukraine neutrality for peace, Trump says, ‘I think we’ll speak’
Particularly since this operation began, the Biden administration has waged this proxy war against Russia by flooding Ukraine with many billions of dollars in weapons that has placed the U.S. on the verge of a possible nuclear war with Moscow.
Having annexed several regions of Ukraine dominated by ethnic Russians, about a fifth of the nation’s territory, Putin expressed terms for peace in June, including Ukraine’s renouncing all ambitions for membership in NATO and withdraw of all troops from territory claimed by Russia.
“We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests,” he said in Sochi.
Asked about the future borders of Ukraine, Putin said, “The borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories.”
While casualty and death toll figures for this current conflict are difficult to confirm, some reports estimate that as many as one million people, mostly military personnel, have thus far been killed with the numbers continuing to rise each day.
On Thursday, President-elect Trump told NBC News he has spoken with “probably” 70 world leaders since his victory. He also specified that he had not yet spoken with Putin but remarked, “I think we’ll speak.”
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