Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he is ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and has no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.
Mr Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements has vowed to swiftly end the conflict but has not yet given any details on how he might achieve that.
President Putin, fielding questions on state TV during his annual question and answer session with Russians, told a reporter for a US news channel that he was ready to meet Mr Trump, whom he said he had not spoken to for years.
Asked what he might be able to offer President-elect Trump, Mr Putin dismissed an assertion that Russia was in a weak position, saying that Russia had got much stronger since he ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022.
"We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises," Mr Putin said, after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine.
"Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises," he said.
Reuters reported last month that Mr Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Mr Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv abandon its ambitions to join NATO.
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Mr Putin said that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine's legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to be only the Ukrainian parliament.
Mr Zelensky, whose term was due to expire earlier this year but has been extended due to martial law, would need to be re-elected for Moscow to consider him a legitimate signatory to any deal to ensure it was legally watertight, said Mr Putin.
Mr Putin dismissed the idea of agreeing a temporary truce with Kyiv, saying only a long-lasting peace deal with Ukraine would suffice.
Any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the early weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, he added.
Some Ukrainian politicians regard that draft deal as akin to a capitulation which would have neutered Ukraine's military and political ambitions.
Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia, which casts the conflict as a defensive special military operation designed to stop dangerous NATO expansion to the east, controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has taken several thousand square kilometres of territory this year.
Determined to incorporate four Ukrainian regions into Russia, Moscow's forces have taken village after village in the east and are now threatening strategically important cities such as Pokrovsk, a major road and rail hub.
Mr Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was "difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead...(but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation".
Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk region, Mr Putin said Kyiv's troops would be forced out, but declined to say exactly when that would happen.
The war has transformed the Russian economy and Mr Putin said it was showing signs of overheating which was stoking worryingly high inflation.
But he said growth was higher than many other economies such as Britain.
Asked if he'd do anything differently, he said he should have sent troops into Ukraine sooner than 2022 and that Russia should have been better prepared for the conflict.
Asked by a BBC reporter if he'd looked after Russia, something that Boris Yeltsin had asked him to do before handing over the presidency at the end of 1999, President Putin said he had.
"We have moved back from the edge of the abyss," Mr Putin said.
"I have done everything to ensure that Russia is an independent and sovereign power that is able to make decisions in its own interests."
Russia, President Putin said, had made proposals to Syria's new rulers about Russia's military bases there and most people that Moscow had spoken to on the issue favoured them staying.
Russia would need to think about whether the bases should remain or not, he added, but rumours about the death of Russian influence in the Middle East were exaggerated.
Mr Putin touted what he said was the invincibility of the "Oreshnik" hypersonic missile that Russia has already test-fired at a Ukrainian military factory, saying he was ready to organise another launch at Ukraine and see if Western air defence systems could shoot it down.
In Brussels, President Zelensky addressed Mr Putin's missile suggestion during a press conference at a European Council meeting, remarking of Mr Putin: "Do you think he is a sane person?"
100 North Korean soldiers killed
Meanwhile at least 100 North Korean soldiers deployed to support Russia's war effort in Ukraine have been killed since entering combat in December, a South Korean politician has said.
North Korea has sent thousands of troops to reinforce Russia's military, including to the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces seized territory earlier this year.
"In December, they (North Korean troops) engaged in actual combat, during which at least 100 fatalities occurred," said Lee Seong-kweun.
"The National Intelligence Service (NIS) also reported that the number of injured is expected to reach nearly 1,000," he added.
Mr Lee said there were indications that "several North Korean casualties, including high-ranking officials, had already occurred due to Ukraine's missile and drone attacks, as well as training accidents".
He said the NIS has said that the high number of casualties could be attributed to the "unfamiliar battlefield environment, where North Korean forces are being utilised as expendable frontline assault units, and their lack of capability to counter drone attacks".
Mr Lee added that "within the Russian military, complaints have reportedly surfaced that the North Korean troops, due to their lack of knowledge about drones, are more of a burden than an asset".
He also said the NIS had heard rumours of additional troop deployments circulating within North Korea's "Storm Corps".
The official's comments came after Ukraine's commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said Russia had used North Korean troops at the heart of an "intensive offensive" in Kursk over several days.
A landmark defence pact between North Korea and Russia signed in June came into force earlier this month.
