Finland’s President Sees Trump Seeking Peace in Ukraine Quickly

(Bloomberg) -- Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said a call he had with Donald Trump on Monday night made clear the president-elect needs to be taken seriously when he speaks about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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“We in Europe and the rest of the world need to understand that Donald Trump is very serious about getting a peace deal sooner rather than later,” Stubb said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “There’s a window of opportunity for these negotiations between the election and inauguration day.”

Trump emerged victorious in the Nov. 5 election, beating Vice President Kamala Harris, and is set to be inaugurated Jan. 20 in Washington.

Speaking from the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, Stubb listed four prerequisites for peace in Ukraine. Those include territory — “and here we don’t know where things are going to settle,” he said. The second one is security guarantees, the third is justice and “then the low-hanging fruit is actually number four, which is reconstruction.”

The Finnish president last month met China’s President Xi Jinping during a visit to Beijing, where Russia’s war also came up, as Xi has worked to maintain close bilateral ties with the Kremlin.

For Finland, Russia’s full-scale aggression was a wake-up call that prompted a rapid move to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last year. Its border with Russia exceeds 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) and now makes up more than half of NATO’s eastern flank.

The Nordic country has a history of wars with Moscow, and has provided Kyiv with military support including air defense and heavy ammunition.

--With assistance from Federica Romaniello.

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