Donald Trump is the “only one who can force” Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table over the war in Ukraine, Finland’s president has told the BBC.
Alexander Stubb also said that Finland would never recognise occupied Crimea as part of Russia, and that he wanted to ensure Ukraine became an EU and hopefully Nato member once the war was over.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme spoke to President Stubb ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Trump at the White House on Friday, where he told the US president: “I think we can end this war with your help.”
Meanwhile, Trump said that Putin has agreed to meet face-to-face with him in Hungary.
The US leader said on Friday that Putin “wants to get it ended. I think that President Zelensky wants to get it ended. Now we have to get it done”.
Zelensky said in the White House that Ukraine was ready to talk in any format and wanted peace, but argued that Putin needed to be “pressured” into ending the war.
In August, Trump and Putin met in Alaska for a summit that did not result in a breakthrough, or yield a further meeting involving Zelensky.
Stubb said Trump had once asked him – over a game of golf – whether he could trust Putin; and Stubb’s answer was no.
“What we need is not so much the power of the carrot to convince Russia 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 optimistic about Trump’s ability, saying he believed peace negotiations had probably advanced more in the past eight months during Trump’s second term than in the previous three years.
Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Stubb said Finland would never recognise Crimea, or the regions of Donetsk or Luhansk, as Russian. Russia controls 70% of Donetsk and nearly all of neighbouring 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.
Trump said in August that there would be “no going into Nato by Ukraine” as part of a peace deal.
The US president previously floated the idea that there may be some “land swaps” in a future peace deal, but then, in September, said Kyiv could “win all of Ukraine back in its original form”.
When asked why Trump had apparently changed his tune, Stubb said it was because Russia was not advancing – seizing only 1% of Ukrainian territory in the past 1,000 days. Ukraine had also been able to push back, he said.
Stubb said Russia’s economy – smaller than Italy’s – was suffering, with the country’s reserves depleted, growth “pretty much around zero”, and inflation raised to between 10% and 20%.
Stubb said economic threats should be used to bring Russia to the table, most importantly giving €200bn (£173bn) worth of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine as a loan that would stay there if Russia did not pay compensation after peace negotiations.
He also wanted to see exports of Russian oil and gas to Europe – which have dropped by 80% – cut off. Sanctions could be put on countries that buy Russian oil and gas, he said, in addition to the 19th European sanctions package targeting Russia.
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 said Europe’s “coalition of the willing” was ready to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, with the key help in the air, on the seas and with intelligence.
But they needed a backstop from the US, specifically in air defences, intelligence and operations, he said.
Stubb said he hoped to see some results from a two-phase peace process – the first a ceasefire to stop the killing and the second an extended peace process – “in 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.”
