© EPA-EFE/KIMMO BRANDT The President of Finland warned about the risks associated with the geopolitical situation in Europe.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb said he was “not very optimistic” about a peace deal as Putin continues to “test everyone's patience,” The Guardian reports.
“Our common assessment is that the security situation in Europe will remain complex and unpredictable for a long time. In these turbulent times, it is important to have close allies like Lithuania and Finland. We need a reliable collective defense of Europe's eastern flank,” he said.
Discussing the lack of progress in Ukraine, he said he was not “very optimistic about achieving a ceasefire or creating a basis for peace talks in the near future” as Putin continues to drag out any discussions.
He said Europe should “continue dialogue and engagement” with US President Donald Trump, “who is in a very advantageous position.”
“We need to coordinate security measures with the United States, which will actually be the guarantor of this. That's what we're focused on right now. We're discussing these issues with our defense chiefs, who are developing specific plans for what such an operation might look like, and I emphasize that this is about the period after the peace agreement,” Stubb said about security guarantees for Ukraine.
Stubb also warned that China's summit with Russia and India once again demonstrated “the long-running competition to shape a new world order.”
“What we saw at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit is consistent with trends we have been observing for some time: there is an attempt to undermine the unity of the global West. My message is not only to our European colleagues, but especially to the US: if we do not pursue a more cooperative and dignified foreign policy, especially towards the global South, such as India, we will lose this game,” the Finnish president added.
Earlier, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said that he believes that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is making demands on Ukraine that are impossible to fulfill in practice. According to him, this is a typical Russian negotiating tactic, when at the beginning of the talks the Russians make one statement and then start to back down from their words.
