Russia is ready to compromise with Trump on Ukraine: Putin

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has said he is 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 on Thursday 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.

"We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises," Putin said after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine.

"Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises."

Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements and author of the 1987 book 'Trump: the Art of the Deal', has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, but has not yet given any details on how he might achieve that.

Complex fighting

It was 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 Kiev abandon its ambitions to join NATO.

Russia's 2022 full-scale military offensive against 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.

Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was "difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead... (but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation".

Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk region, Putin said Kiev's troops would definitely be forced out, but declined to say exactly when that would happen.

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 Kiev, 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.