(Tribune News Service) — President Vladimir Putin said he’s willing to hold talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, though he said they haven’t spoken in more than four years.

“I don’t know when we’ll meet because he doesn’t say anything about it,” Putin said Thursday at his annual televised news conference and phone-in in Moscow. “I haven’t spoken to him at all for more than four years. I’m ready for it, of course, at any time. And I’ll be ready to meet if he wants.”

Trump has said he wants to bring about an end to Russia’s nearly three-year long war on Ukraine even before he takes office for his second presidential term on Jan. 20. On Monday, he said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should be “prepared to make a deal” and appeared to downplay the value of land occupied by Russia since Putin ordered the February 2022 full-scale invasion.

Trump has also said he wants Putin to be ready to agree on a deal. So far, though, the incoming U.S. president hasn’t indicated how he’ll get both sides to the negotiating table to resolve the war, and on what terms.

With its forces advancing on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, Russia has expressed reluctance to agree to an immediate ceasefire. Putin has said he’s willing to hold talks, while insisting that any negotiations take account of the realities on the ground since his forces invaded Ukraine and occupied swathes of the country’s south and east.

He’s also demanding that Ukraine abandon its goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Putin said he hasn’t spoken to ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad since he fled to Moscow to escape rebel forces that ended his family’s more than half-century rule earlier this month.

“I haven’t seen President Assad since his arrival in Moscow,” Putin said, in his first comments on the ouster of his ally. “But I plan to, we’ll definitely talk.”

Putin said he’d ask Assad about missing American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria 12 years ago, and would also be willing to contact those who’re now in charge of the country, in response to a question from a U.S. journalist.

He didn’t explain why he hasn’t yet seen Assad, a key Middle East partner for Moscow. Putin sent Russian forces to bolster Assad’s regime against rebels in 2015, but with his military consumed by the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin could do nothing to save him this time.

Russia is in contact with the new leadership in Damascus, headed by a former offshoot of al-Qaeda, to try to keep a naval port and air base in Syria that are vital to the Kremlin’s efforts to project power in the Mediterranean and support its operations in countries across Africa.

Putin disclosed that Russia had airlifted 4,000 Iranian fighters out of Syria from the air base at Khmeimim at the request of the authorities in Tehran.

He insisted that developments in Syria didn’t represent a defeat for Russia. Moscow’s working out what its relationship with the country’s new leadership should be and whether their interests coincide, Putin said.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

Visit bloomberg.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

previous coverage

• Trump says it was ‘stupid’ for Biden to let Ukraine use US weapons to strike deeper into Russia
• Russia pushed Assad to flee Syria after concluding he’d lost war
• Biden is rushing aid to Ukraine, both sides are digging in, and everyone is bracing for Trump
• American pilgrim imprisoned in Assad’s Syria calls his release from prison a ‘blessing’
• Syrian rebels offer to help US search for journalist Austin Tice
• Mother of Marine veteran missing in Syria waiting with ‘joy and anticipation’ for son to be found