Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there will be no more wars after Ukraine if Russia is treated with respect and dismissed claims that Moscow is planning to attack European countries as “nonsense”.

In a 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 the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“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.

Earlier this month, Putin said Russia was not planning to go to war with Europe but was ready “right now” if Europeans wanted to.

Answering a question from the BBC Russia editor on Friday, Putin also added the condition that there would be no further Russian invasions “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 the 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, which it annexed in 2014.

Russian state TV claimed more than three million questions had been submitted.

Just hours after the televised marathon, Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed and a further 15 injured in a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Putin argued Russian forces were making advances across the front line in Ukraine, and he ridiculed Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the front line at Kupiansk last week, when the Ukrainian leader was able to refute Russia’s claims that it had captured the town.

Peace proposals

Putin has also demanded new elections in Ukraine to be included in the peace proposals that US President Donald Trump has submitted as part of his efforts to bring the conflict to an end. At his news conference, Putin offered to stop bombing Ukraine when voting took place.

Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Friday it had for the first time hit an oil tanker operating as part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Mediterranean. Putin said it would not lead to the result that Kyiv wanted and would not disrupt Russian exports.

Most of the questions from Russian media or from the public made little attempt to challenge Putin, but two were allowed from Western correspondents, Keir Simmons of US network NBC and the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg.

When Simmons asked if Putin would feel responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians if he rejected the Trump peace plan, Putin praised the US president’s “sincere” efforts to end the war but said it was the West, not Russia, that was blocking a deal.

“The ball is in the hands of our Western opponents,” he said, “primarily the leaders of the Kyiv regime, and in this case, first and foremost, their European sponsors.”

Trump has said a peace deal is closer than ever, and, despite Putin’s apparent refusal to compromise, the US president has said he hopes “Ukraine moves quickly because Russia is there.”

A Ukrainian delegation is holding talks in Miami on Friday with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. German, French and British officials are also there, days after they met the US officials in Berlin.

Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev is also expected in Miami over the weekend, according to reports.

Putin told the BBC’s Russia Editor, “We are ready to work with you – with the UK and with Europe in general and with the United States, but as equals, with mutual respect for each other.

“We are ready to cease these hostilities immediately, provided that Russia’s medium- and long-term security is ensured, and we are ready to cooperate with you.”

He accused the West of creating an enemy out of Russia. Skating over his decision to mount a full-scale invasion in February 2022, he said, “You are waging a war against us with the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” before repeating his regular diatribe against Ukraine’s democratically elected leaders.

European intelligence agencies have warned that Russia is only a few years away from attacking NATO. The Western defensive alliance’s chief, Mark Rutte, said this month that Russia was already escalating a covert campaign and the West had to be prepared for war.

While many of the questions were benign, including several from children, one reporter from Yakutia in northeastern Siberia highlighted a tenfold increase in energy prices in the past four years. Putin told her that his team would look into alternative sources of energy and “keep Yakutia in mind”.

Towards the end of the TV marathon, Putin was asked a series of quick-fire questions, touching on his views on friendship, religion, the motherland and love at first sight. He said he believed in love at first sight – then added that he himself was in love, without divulging any more details.