A ceasefire in Ukraine is unlikely before spring, and European allies should continue to support Kiev despite the corruption scandal that has rocked Ukraine, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Europe will need sisu - a Finnish word meaning patience, endurance - to get through the winter months, he said, in view of the hybrid attacks and information warfare that Russia is waging across the continent.
Stubb will also need this quality given the fact that he is one of the main European mediators between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. As the leader of one of the smallest countries in Europe, yet with a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, he clearly understands what is at stake, the AP notes.
In the 1940s, after two wars with Moscow, Finland ceded about 10 percent of its territory to its eastern neighbor and agreed to maintain military neutrality, a policy that was only recently reversed in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine when Helsinki joined NATO. The conservative Stubb has used his good relationship with Trump - the two play golf together and speak regularly - to lobby him in support of Ukraine.
"I can explain to President Trump what Finland has been through and how I see the situation on the battlefield, and also how to approach (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. "And then who knows, even if he accepts only one out of ten offers, it's still good," he said.
Stub gave the AP interview from a military base north of the capital Helsinki, where he inspected the training of Finns who had signed up for voluntary military training. He wore a jacket with the word sisu on the back and watched as the volunteers practiced evacuating wounded soldiers from a combat zone in sub-zero temperatures.
Stub told the AP that Zelensky must quickly deal with the scandal surrounding allegations of embezzlement in the energy sector, because Russia benefits from it. At the same time, he called on European leaders to increase military and financial support for Kiev, which is also facing Moscow's creeping successes on the battlefield.
"I am not very optimistic that there will be a ceasefire or the start of peace talks, at least not this year", Stubb said, adding that it would be good if some processes in this direction began by March. The Finnish leader added that there are three main issues that need to be settled for a ceasefire to be concluded - guarantees for Ukraine's security, the restoration of its economy and reaching some kind of understanding regarding territorial claims.
For peace in Ukraine, according to him, Trump and European leaders will need to put maximum pressure on Putin to force him to change his "strategic plans". Stubb suggests this could be done through means such as using billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets in Europe to aid Ukraine and increase military pressure on Russia.
Stubb praised Trump for imposing sanctions last month on Russian energy companies "Lukoil" and "Rosneft", but said that alone would not be enough. The Finnish leader said he believed Ukraine should be given the capacity to strike targets such as Russia"s "defense industry".