Putin praises Trump and says he is willing to talk to him

President Vladimir Putin congratulated Thursday Donald Trump for winning the elections of the United States, praised him for showing bravery when a armed man tried to kill him and said that Moscow is willing to talk to the Republican.

“I would like to congratulate you on your election as president,” Putin said at the Valdai debate club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The president-elect said he has not spoken to Putin since his election victory this week, but added: “I think we will talk.”

Trump told NBC in an interview released Thursday that he has probably spoken to 70 world leaders since Wednesday morning.

“Dangerous line”

Separately, following Trump’s victory, Putin condemned the US for trying to inflict strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine and said a bid is underway to shape a new world order as the post-Cold War era dominated by the West from falling apart.

“We have reached a dangerous line,” Putin said at an event in Sochi, a day after learning that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election.

“The West’s calls to inflict strategic defeat on Russia, a country with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the exorbitant adventurism of Western politicians,” he noted.

The West has arrogantly tried to portray Russia as a defeated power after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he said, describing the U.S.-led NATO military alliance as an anachronism.

Russia, he said, does not consider Western civilization an enemy, despite attempts by the United States and its allies to isolate Moscow.

In any case, the world is changing and many powerful countries do not want to isolate Russia.

“The old structure of the world is irrevocably disappearing, we can say that it has already disappeared, and a serious and irreconcilable struggle is developing for the formation of a new one,” Putin said.

“The world needs Russia, and no decision from so-called superiors in Washington or Brussels can change that.”

Trump said during the campaign that he could achieve peace in Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, but has given few details about how he would try to end Europe’s biggest ground war since World War II.

Putin said that what Trump had said during the campaign about resolving the Ukrainian crisis deserved attention, and that if Trump wanted to resume contacts, Russia was willing to discuss it.

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