"If we receive an invitation, Russia will certainly be represented at the events," Putin said at a meeting with political party leaders of the Hungarian parliament in Budapest.
In 1956, a revolt swept Hungary against the ruling Soviet-backed authorities. The uprising lasted from 23 October to 4 November, and was eventually suppressed by Soviet troops and tanks. Tens of thousands of Hungarians and 7,000 Soviet troops are thought to have died and thousands were wounded. Nearly a quarter of a million more fled the country.
Putin said that both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin had made their positions clear during their tenures as head of state.
"Yeltsin said openly in 1992 that modern Russia condemned the Soviet leadership's policy of 1956," Putin said, adding that Russia understood that the events had been a devastating tragedy.
"We really feel compassion and moral responsibility, although present-day Russia has nothing in common with the Soviet Union's actions," Putin said.
The president said this was also true of the bloody suppression of anti-Soviet protests in East Germany in 1953 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Putin is expected to arrive in Prague on the next leg of his tour later tonight.
Echoing previous comments, Putin called on people to look to the future, but without forgetting the past, and to defend jointly democratic values as a basis for further relations.
