Trump and Putin express desire to talk before January inauguration

Both US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have expressed a desire to communicate with each other before the President-elect's January inauguration. 

Trump said he has not spoken with Putin since his election victory this week but added, "I think we'll speak," according to an interview with Trump published by NBC on Thursday.

In his first remarks since the US election, Putin officially congratulated Trump on his election victory while speaking to the press at the Valadai forum in Sochi, according to reporting from The Moscow Times. 

"I take this opportunity to congratulate him," he said and further added that he was "ready" to speak with the "courageous" President-elect. 

However, Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia will not initiate contact with the United States. 

Trump said he would call Putin first

“It’s not ruled out,” Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday regarding any future contact between the two leaders before the US presidential inauguration, as reported by The Moscow Times. “[Trump] has said he’d call Putin before the inauguration. These are his words. We have nothing else to say here yet.”

In his remarks to the press, Putin noted Trump's statements regarding the Russia-Ukraine war caught his attention. 

"What was said about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to bring about the end of the Ukrainian crisis, in my opinion this deserves attention at least," said Putin, as reported in Retuers.

Trump stated in a July interview with Fox News that he would need "one day" to end the Ukraine-Russia war. 

The 72-year-old Kremlin chief gave one note of caution regarding a second Trump term: "I do not know what is going to happen now. I have no clue.

“For him, this is still his last presidential term," he said. "What he will do is his matter."

Kurt Volker, the former Trump administration special representative for Ukraine negotiations, told The Kyiv Independent that he believed that once Trump is in office, he would call Putin with haste. 

"I think he's going to make a phone call to Putin as quickly as possible and tell Putin that he needs to stop the war, that the fighting has to stop, and that there has to be peace," Volker told The Kyiv Independent after the election results were called Wednesday.

“That will start a discussion about how that actually happens,” he added. “I don’t think Trump wants to see this war continue once he’s actually in office.

"If you want peace, as Trump says that he does, then what you need to do is convince Putin that it's going to hurt him, that it's going to cost him too much if he pursues the war."

In his Thursday remarks, Putin also said that he admired the way that Trump handled his July assassination attempt. 

“His behavior at the moment of an attempt on his life left an impression on me," Putin said, as reported by The Washington Post. "He turned out to be a brave man.” 

"He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a real man," Putin said.

Reuters contributed to this report.