Vladimir Putin has claimed Donald Trump will quickly have the “European elites” under control as though he is their “master”.

The Russian president has often expressed his disdain for the west following his invasion of Ukraine, which saw the US and most of Europe ally with Kyiv.

But now Trump is back in the White House and pushing for a peace deal in the Ukraine war, Putin is trying to appeal to the US president so he might emerge with a more favourable agreement.

So he told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday: “Trump, given his personality, his firmness, will establish order fairly quickly.

“And all of them [in Europe] quickly, you will see, stand at the master’s feet, wagging their tails tenderly.”

It’s not clear precisely what issue Putin was referring to as Trump’s re-election has already impacted Europe significantly.

The US president is threatening to slap tariffs on trade with the EU, as he has has already done with Canada, Mexico and China, and the bloc has made it clear it will retaliate.

Trump is also pushing for all of the states in Nato – the defence alliance made up of mainly European states which, funnily enough, Putin has long opposed – to increase their defence spending to a whopping 5% of their GDP.

The US is Ukraine’s most powerful ally, too, meaning if Kyiv refuses the terms of any peace deal put forward and Trump pulls his American support, Europe will have to scramble to fill the funding gap so Ukraine can keep fighting.

Putin continued: “There is some fuss now between European political elites and the newly-elected president Trump.

“Has anything changed since [the administration of the former President Joe] Biden? Nothing has changed.

“They simply followed any order by Washington under Biden with pleasure.

“They simply don’t like Trump, and they fought against him actively, interfering with the political life, the election processes in the United States.

“And now that Trump has won they are lost.”

Putin is expected to benefit from Trump’s return to power because the US president has repeatedly said he wants the Ukraine war to be over as soon as possible, but he has not explained how he would do so.

This has sparked speculation Trump would push Kyiv to cede its occupied territories to Moscow – meaning Ukraine would lose around a fifth of its land.

Trump and Putin have both said they are ready to meet to discuss the war, but details are yet to be confirmed.