President Vladimir Putin on Friday praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in the Middle East and criticized the Nobel Committee for awarding its peace prize to people he claimed did nothing to deserve it, remarks that appeared aimed at currying favor with Trump, who has grown increasingly cool toward Moscow amid stalled efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
Putin told reporters at a press conference in Tajikistan that Trump “is definitely making an effort and working on these issues — on achieving peace and resolving complex international affairs,” noting that the “clearest example” of those efforts is the recent ceasefire in Gaza.
“Whether the current U.S. president deserves the Nobel Prize or not, I don’t know. But he is truly doing a lot to resolve complex crises that have dragged on for years, even decades,” the Kremlin leader added.
Putin also accused the Nobel Committee of awarding its peace prize to “people who did nothing for peace,” comments that came just hours after the committee announced Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as this year’s winner of the annual award.
“In my view, those decisions have done enormous damage to the prize’s reputation,” Putin told reporters. Earlier in the day, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov had told state media that Moscow would welcome a Nobel win for Trump.
Turning to the war in Ukraine, Putin told reporters in Tajikstan that Russia and the United States “could still accomplish a lot more” based on agreements he and Trump reached during their Aug. 15 summit in Alaska, which had been billed as an opportunity to break a deadlock in Ukraine peace negotiations but ended without any tangible results.
“We didn’t fully disclose what was discussed in Anchorage. We continue to operate based on those talks and have made no changes on our part,” Putin said, following earlier conflicting statements from top Russian officials about whether the “momentum” from those negotiations had faded.
But the Russian leader also had a warning for Washington. Asked about reports that Trump was considering sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, he vowed Russia would respond by “strengthening its air defense systems” and derided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “show-off” for threatening to use the long-range weapons against targets inside Russia.
In an attempt to signal strength, Putin said Moscow was preparing a new weapon for its armed forces, echoing last year’s episode when the Kremlin unveiled the experimental Oreshnik hypersonic missile.
“I think we’ll soon have the opportunity to announce a new weapon that we once unveiled. It’s now emerging and undergoing testing,” he told reporters without going into further detail.
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