Russian President Vladimir Putin gave off mixed signals in a menacing mega conference where he challenged the U.S. to a missile “duel,” but added that he was ready for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.
The Kremlin chief was speaking during his annual end-of-the-year speech, where he fielded questions from the public and journalists about everything—from the price of butter to a culmination of his war with Ukraine.
He also spoke about the U.S. several times during the marathon conference in Moscow. Putin, according to the BBC, promised to quiz former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the whereabouts of American journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted in the country.
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The 72-year-old also menacingly threw down the gauntlet to Trump, concerning the use of Russia’s Oreshnik missile. Putin first deployed it in Dnipro, Ukraine, last month before critics said it couldn’t alter the outcome of the war, because Russia doesn’t have very many of the weapons.
And the BBC, reporting live from the end-of-year event, said that Putin “casually suggested that Russia and the U.S. take up a challenge” on the intermediate-range ballistic missile.
He said if fired at Kyiv, Western technology stationed there to defend against the missile in this imaginary scenario “stands no chance” of intercepting it.
“Let’s conduct this duel and look at the outcome,” he added. “It will be interesting for us.”
In firebrand mood, the Russian leader also suggested that his country had the right to use nuclear weapons if it was threatened.
But despite all of this saber-rattling and ire directed towards the West, Putin added that he is open to dialogue with Trump when he takes office in Jan. 2025.
“I’m ready for that, of course, at any time, and I’m ready to meet him if he wants to,” he said. The pair haven’t met since the G20 summit in Japan in 2019, and haven’t spoken since.
The Daily Beast’s foreign correspondent Anna Nemtsova pointed out that Putin’s word of the day was “horror.” She wrote on X: “We have never heard #Putin pronounce the word ‘horror’ as many times as today—6 times in two sentences.”
He used it several times in his answer to the first question at the event after moderators asked “when the world is going crazy, how does Russia manage not only to hold on, but even to grow?”
He responded cryptically: “When everything is calm, measured, stable, we are bored. This is when everyone wants action.
“As soon as action starts, everything whistles at our temples, and seconds, and bullets, unfortunately... we are scared. What a horror,” he added.
“Well, it’s not that horror. Not horror-horror.”
