Russia's President Vladimir Putin has said there will be no more wars after Ukraine if Russia is treated with respect - and claims that Moscow is planning to attack European countries are nonsense.
In a marathon televised event lasting almost four and a half hours, he was asked by the BBC's Steve Rosenberg whether there would be new special military operations - Putin's term for full-scale war.
There won't be any operations if you treat us with respect, if you respect our interests just as we've always tried to respect yours, he asserted.
His remarks were in line with a recent comment in which he said Russia was not planning to go to war but was ready right now if Europe wanted to.
He also added the condition,if you don't cheat us like you cheated us with Nato's eastward expansion.
He has long accused NATO of going back on an alleged 1990 Western promise to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev before the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev later denied that such a remark had been made.
The Direct Line marathon combined questions from the public at large and journalists from across Russia in a Moscow hall, with Putin sitting beneath an enormous map of Russia that encompassed occupied areas of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Russian state TV claimed more than three million questions had been submitted.
Although it was largely choreographed, some critical comments from the public appeared on a big screen, including one that referred to the event as a circus, another bemoaning internet outages, and one that highlighted poor-quality tap water. Mobile internet outages have been blamed by authorities on Ukrainian drone attacks.
Putin also addressed Russia's faltering economy, with prices rising, growth on the slide, and VAT going up from 20 to 22% on 1 January. One message to the president read: Stop the crazy rise in prices on everything!
The Kremlin regularly uses the end-of-year event to highlight the resilience of the economy, and as Putin spoke, Russia's central bank announced it was lowering interest rates to 16%.
Putin insisted on principles he had outlined in a June 2024 speech demanding Ukrainian forces leave four regions Russia partially occupies and that Kyiv gives up its efforts to join NATO.
Putin argued Russian forces were making advances across the front line in Ukraine and ridiculed Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the front line at Kupiansk last week, where the Ukrainian leader refuted Russian claims that it had captured the town.
Putin also demanded new elections in Ukraine to be included in the peace proposals submitted by US President Donald Trump. At his news conference, Putin offered to stop bombing Ukraine during the voting.
The ongoing Ukraine conflict was consistently a backdrop to the dialogue, with Putin demanding respect for Russian security interests.
Despite his unyielding position, he expressed a willingness to cooperate with Western leaders on ending hostilities, provided that mutual respect is established.
He accused the West of painting Russia as an enemy and claimed there is a concerted effort to wage war against it through Ukrainian proxies.
