President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday offered to suspend long-range strikes deep inside Ukraine during any potential presidential election held by Kyiv, as the Russian leader reiterated his call for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to face a wartime vote.
But Mr. Putin also said Ukrainians living in Russia must be allowed to participate in the election, a questionable demand given that Ukraine closed its embassy in Russia in early 2022.
Mr. Putin made the comments during a marathon four-and-a-half hour news conference in Moscow, an elaborately orchestrated television show that the Kremlin puts on every year.
Quizzed by journalists and ordinary Russians in a studio built in a giant exhibition center near the Kremlin, the Russian leader held court on topics including peace talks, wartime benefits for soldiers and taxes. Once a raucous affair, this year’s event was particularly muted, with the Russian leader making little news.
The broadcast aimed to show how, over the past three decades, Mr. Putin has solidified his position as Russia’s ultimate decision maker — personally engaged in issues ranging from leaking pipes in small cities to major foreign conflict.
On Ukraine, Mr. Putin repeated many familiar talking points. He lashed out at European leaders for considering using Russian sovereign assets frozen in Europe to extend a large loan to Ukraine, although on Friday the leaders ultimately decided to leave those assets untouched.
Then, toward the end of his conference, Mr. Putin noted that Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine had held regional and local elections for years despite Ukrainian military strikes, meaning there was no reason Kyiv could not hold an overdue presidential election nationwide.
“I will now say something that may sound unexpected: We are ready to consider ensuring security during the elections in Ukraine, at least by refraining from strikes deep into the territory on Election Day,” Mr. Putin said. He did not offer to suspend hostilities altogether.
Earlier this month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, under pressure from Washington, said he would be prepared to hold a presidential vote in Ukraine — despite a legally enshrined ban on elections in the country during times of martial law — if the United States and Europe gave Kyiv security guarantees. The move was seen as a key concession by Ukraine.
Mr. Putin has called into question Mr. Zelensky’s legitimacy ever since the Ukrainian leader’s presidential term formally expired in 2024, claiming that Mr. Zelensky no longer has the power to sign a peace deal with Moscow. He has demanded a vote as part of peace talks. But many Ukrainians worry about wartime manipulation by Moscow aimed at installing a more Russia-friendly government in Kyiv during that vote.
On Friday, Mr. Putin added a condition: that the five to 10 million Ukrainian citizens he said were living on Russian territory be given the opportunity to vote during the election. But any vote in Russia and the areas of Ukraine that Moscow occupies would be nearly impossible to carry out and verify.
“The government in Ukraine must ultimately become legitimate, and without elections, this is impossible,” said Mr. Putin, who was re-elected for a six-year term last year during a stage-managed, unfree election with no real competition.
It is unclear how Mr. Putin came up with the number of Ukrainians living in Russia, but he appeared to be including Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Approximately 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees were living in Russia as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to the United Nations. About six million Ukrainian citizens are living in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian authorities, though Moscow has been pressuring them to accept Russian citizenship.
Even as Mr. Putin said that Russia had made concessions to suit Ukraine and its allies during peace talks, the Russian leader showed no sign of budging from his primary goals in the war.
Instead, he talked up Russia’s battlefield advances, presenting Moscow’s victory as inevitable.
“The strategic initiative is completely in the hands of the Russian forces,” Mr. Putin said.
He accused Ukraine of refusing to end the conflict peacefully and said Kyiv was declining to negotiate on the question of territory, but he also said that there were “certain signals” that Kyiv was “ready to engage in some kind of dialogue.”
“The ball is entirely in the court of our Western opponents,” he said, adding that Russia had agreed to certain compromises proposed by the United States and that these were “difficult decisions.”
Russia’s negotiators have dropped their initial demand, seen as outlandish by U.S. negotiators, that Ukraine hand over the entirety of the four eastern regions of Ukraine that Moscow “annexed” in 2022, much of which is still controlled by Kyiv.
