Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has told the BBC that President Donald Trump is the “only one who can force” Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate over the Ukraine conflict.
Alexander Stubb also stated that Finland would never acknowledge seized Crimea as part of Russia and that once the war was over, he wanted Ukraine to join the EU and, hopefully, NATO.
Stubb talked with BBC Radio 4’s Today program ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Trump at the White House on Friday, during which he urged the US president, “I think we can end this war with your help.”
Meanwhile, Trump announced that Putin has agreed to meet with him in Hungary.
The US president stated on Friday that Putin “wants to get it ended. “I believe President Zelensky wants it to finish. Now we need to get it done.”
Zelensky stated in the White House that Ukraine was willing to negotiate in any format and desired peace, but that Putin needed to be “pressured” to end the war.
In August, Trump and Putin met in Alaska for a summit that yielded no breakthroughs or a subsequent meeting with Zelensky.
Stubb claimed that Trump once asked him, over a game of golf, whether he could trust Putin, to which Stubb replied, “No.”
“What we need is not so much the power of the carrot to convince Russia to come to the negotiating table; it’s more of the stick that will bring them.
“So you have to force Russia to come to the negotiating table for peace, and that’s the deal President Trump is trying to make.”
He said Trump “has been giving the carrot to President Putin, and the carrot was in Alaska, and of course now if you look at the language that he has put forward lately, there has been more stick.”
Stubb was confident about Trump’s ability, adding that peace talks had certainly progressed more in the last eight months of Trump’s second term than in the preceding three years.
Russia captured the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and plans a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Stubb stated that Finland would never accept Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk as Russian. Russia controls 70% of Donetsk and virtually all of the neighboring Luhansk.
He said, “The only ones who can decide on the land issue are the Ukrainians themselves.”
“I want to make sure that Ukraine, when this war is over, retains its independence, retains its sovereignty—in other words, becomes an EU member state and hopefully a NATO member—and also maintains its territorial integrity. That is what we are all fighting for right now,” Stubb said.
In August, Trump stated that as part of a peace agreement, Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO.
The US president had suggested that there could be some “land swaps” in a future peace accord but then declared in September that Kyiv could “win all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
When questioned why Trump had seemingly altered his tune, Stubb stated that it was because Russia had not advanced, seizing barely 1% of Ukrainian territory in the previous 1,000 days. Ukraine has also been able to respond, he said.
Stubb stated that Russia’s economy, which is smaller than Italy’s, was struggling, with the country’s reserves drained, growth “pretty much around zero,” and inflation at 10% to 20%.
Stubb stated that economic threats should be used to force Russia to the table, most notably the transfer of €200 billion (£173 billion) in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine as a debt that would remain there if Russia did not make compensation following peace talks.
He also intended to cut off Russian oil and gas exports to Europe, which had decreased by 80%. In addition to the 19th European sanctions package targeting Russia, he suggested that sanctions be imposed on countries that buy Russian oil and gas.
Stubb said, “All the strategic games of Putin have been an utter failure.” Russia had been unsuccessful in trying to take over Ukraine, to divide Europe, and to split NATO, with two new members—Finland and Sweden—added instead.
He stated that Europe’s “coalition of the willing” was prepared to provide security assurances to Ukraine, with essential assistance in the air, at sea, and with intelligence.
However, he stated that they required US support, particularly in air defense, intelligence, and operations.
Stubb said he hoped to see results from a two-phase peace process—the first a cease-fire to halt the killing and the second an extended peace process—”in the coming days and weeks.”
“We’ll keep on working at it. The key is to engage and try to find solutions and be pragmatic. In foreign policy you always have to deal with the world as it is, not what you would wish it to be, but let’s do peace.”
