Vladimir Putin’s response to Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory has been notably restrained, with the Kremlin adopting a cautious stance and letting their spokesperson do the talking.

Dmitry Peskov spoke to reporters this morning.

“Let us not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country, which is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state” (in Ukraine),” he said.

“We have repeatedly said that the U.S. is able to contribute to the end of this conflict. This cannot be done overnight, but... the U.S. is capable of changing the trajectory of its foreign policy. Will this happen, and if so, how ... we will see after (Trump’s inauguration in) January.”

Peskov revealed that there were no plans for Putin to congratulate Trump on his win.

Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin

During his previous presidency, Trump often praised Putin, even stating that he believed the Russian leader over his own intelligence agencies regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump also claimed he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, but has not provided details on how he would achieve this.

Russian President Volodymr Zelenskyy was quick to congratulate Trump; the US being Ukraine’s largest financial backer.

On his counterpart, Trump said, “Zelenskyy is one of the best salesmen I’ve ever seen. Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion.”

“Who else has gotten that much money in history?” he continued. “There never has been. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel terrible for those people. But he should never have let this war start. This war is a failure.”

The Republican party has been reluctant to support Ukraine as much as Democrats, leading to concerns that US policy of letting Ukrainians bleed Russia could be ending.