The power of negotiation is starting to come back into the open in Europe. On Tuesday, in Helsinki, Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre sat down together and telephoned Russia's President Vladimir Putin, pressing him directly to end the war in Ukraine. The two leaders initiated the call themselves, breaking with the practice Western European leaders have followed since 2022 of shunning direct contact with the Kremlin. A conversation scheduled for twenty minutes ran to about ninety, according to Støre.
In their joint statement, issued through the Finnish president's office, Stubb and Støre said they initiated the call in consultation with Ukraine, as a follow-up to their meeting in Oslo on 20 October, and that its aim was to convey messages directly to Putin regarding future negotiations to help end the war. They emphasised that the war must end and negotiations must resume, that Finland and Norway will continue their longstanding support for Ukraine, and that de-escalation is urgent. President Zelenskiy's office said the two leaders also demanded an end to Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Both countries border Russia and underlined their shared interest in stability and predictability in the Baltic Sea region and the High North — and they were explicit that they spoke as leaders of their own countries, not on behalf of Europe as a whole.
"The discussion was frank and substantive. We are neighbouring countries to Russia. The outcome of this war will have a direct impact on our and the broader European security. Ending the war requires direct discussions," Stubb said. Støre said: "The war comes with enormous human and material costs. The suffering and destruction will impact generations. In the call we stressed the importance of de-escalation." Støre conceded afterwards that the conversation had exposed a great distance in attitudes between the two sides. Straight afterwards, the pair called Zelenskiy and briefed him in detail.
The Kremlin published its own readout of the call, noting pointedly that it had taken place at the request of the Finnish and Norwegian sides. Moscow said it was emphasised that "achieving a just and long-term peace is possible only if the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation are fully and unconditionally taken into account", and it blamed what it called the confrontational policies of EU and NATO countries for prolonging the hostilities. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the conversation had taken place and said the three leaders agreed to maintain direct telephone contact. Nothing in the Kremlin's account suggested Putin had softened any of his stated positions.
Such direct calls have been rare since Russia's full-scale invasion of February 2022, but they have not been literally unknown. Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz telephoned Putin in November 2024, and France's President Emmanuel Macron spoke with him in July 2025 — the most recent such contact by a leading European backer of Ukraine before Tuesday. Støre himself had not spoken to Putin since March 2022. Tuesday's initiative split opinion in Europe: Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was "very sceptical" of it and urged European unity over solo efforts. Støre answered the criticism directly: all partners and allies, he said, were informed in advance, and in four years the EU has not produced a common approach.
Tuesday's call also sits inside a documented diplomatic sequence led from Washington. The Oslo meeting it followed up, on 20 October, brought Stubb and Støre together with Zelenskiy and President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff; Witkoff then travelled on to meet Putin, and Moscow said it was ready to resume American-mediated talks. Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the United States have since agreed to hold technical-level meetings in Abu Dhabi in early November — the first such round since February — and the Finnish statement ties Tuesday's call directly to those upcoming meetings. That is the documented connection: as the American-led push gathers pace, two of Russia's European neighbours decided their messages should reach Putin before Abu Dhabi, not after. Nothing in either statement says Stubb or Støre will themselves sit at the Abu Dhabi table.
For ordinary people, the stakes are not abstract. The war has cost enormous numbers of lives, driven millions from their homes, and reached into household budgets far beyond Ukraine — through energy prices every winter, through food costs fed by Black Sea grain, and through the taxes that fund Europe's defence and its support for Kyiv. A phone call ends none of that by itself, and this one produced no announced concession from Moscow. But wars of this kind end at negotiating tables or not at all, and an open, direct line between the Kremlin and two neighbouring states that firmly back Ukraine is one more channel through which the pressure for a settlement can actually be applied.
Much remains unknown. What Putin said beyond the Kremlin's short readout is not public; whether he offered anything at all is unknown, and nothing announced suggests he moved. Whether further calls follow is also unknown, though all three leaders agreed to stay in direct telephone contact, and what the Abu Dhabi meetings will produce cannot yet be known. What is known is narrower and, for Europe, new: two leaders who had kept their distance from the Kremlin for years concluded that the silent treatment had run its course, picked up the phone together and told Putin directly that the war must end.
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