Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre have held a joint call with Vladimir Putin – a rare contact between the Russian president and European leaders, the BBC reports.
The aim was looking at “future negotiations to help to end the war” in Ukraine, their offices said. They said their initiative was not on behalf of “Europe as a whole”.
After the call, Putin said “confrontational” EU and Nato policies were prolonging the war which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken to the two Nordic leaders after their conversation with Putin. Last week, Zelensky met them as well as US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo.
The Ukrainian leader said he was grateful for the “active support” of his Finnish and Norwegian counterparts.
Tuesday’s phone call was held from the Finnish capital Helsinki.
“Finland and Norway border Russia,” Stubb and Støre said. They said they had initiated the call to “discuss Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts to end the war and promote peace and stability in Europe”.
“The war comes with enormous human and material costs,” the Norwegian prime minister said. “The suffering and destruction will impact generations.”
Tuesday’s phone call was “frank and substantive”, Stubb said, explaining that the war’s outcome will “have a direct impact on our and the broader European security”.