Vladimir Putin has congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory, as the US President-elect says: ‘I think we’ll speak.’
Putin said Thursday he was ‘ready’ to hold discussions with Trump with the despot having been impressed with how he handled himself ‘like a man’ during an assassination attempt at a rally earlier this year.
‘I take this opportunity to congratulate him,’ Putin said in remarks to the Valdai forum in the southern city of Sochi.
Trump said he had probably spoken to 70 leaders since his astonishing election win, but Putin was not one of them.
But he told NBC: ‘I think we’ll speak.’
It comes after nearly two years and nine months of war after Russia invaded Ukraine halfway into President Joe Biden’s presidency.
Trump came within inches of death during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, armed with an AR-style rifle, opened fire just a few hundred feet from the stage.
