President Stubb: I’m not optimistic about a ceasefire or peace talks in Ukraine this year — maybe by February or March.
Until then, we must maximize pressure on Russia and force Putin to rethink his aim of denying Ukraine’s independence. 1/
Stubb: Ukraine needs two things: financial support, using €140-180B in frozen Russian assets as collateral to get through winter — and increased military pressure.
West must keep supplying weapons. With Putin, only the stick works, he won’t negotiate unless forced. 2/
Stubb: Sanctioning Lukoil and Rosneft was the right move — it hits Russia’s oil sector and the machine funding the war.
Ukraine now needs maximum firepower, not just Tomahawks but anything that can strike Russia’s military and defense industry. 3/
Stubb: Peace mediation requires patience and realism. I’ve focused on building security guarantees for Ukraine, exploring how a ceasefire at the contact line could start, and defining parameters for future talks.
It’s a grind — but in diplomacy, patience matters. 4/
Stubb: Zelenskyy must clear this corruption case fast, and he has already begun. War leaves no space for corruption.
Russia exploits every scandal to weaken Ukraine. I want this cleaned up so we can keep building Europe’s and America’s defense of Ukraine. 5/
Stubb: Budapest meeting cancelled because Trump and his team saw that Russia isn’t interested in a ceasefire or peace.
They saw it first in Alaska, then in Trump’s call with Putin and again when Rubio and Lavrov spoke about the agenda for a meeting. 6/
Stubb: Russia won’t come to talks voluntarily. They’ve gained 1% of Ukraine in 1,000 days while losing 5-7,000 troops a week, over a 1M killed or wounded.
They’re nowhere near Kyiv and won’t get there. What could bring them to talks? Security guarantees, the economy and land. 7/
Stubb: Nuclear use is very unlikely — China and India already pushed Putin to drop early threats. My worry is key arms-control treaties are expiring while more states can access nuclear tech.
Major powers [U.S., Russia and China] must restart nuclear-control talks. 8/
Stubb: Be Finnish — calm and firm. Russia fights a hybrid war: pushing asylum seekers over our border, damaging undersea cables and violating our airspace with drones.
Each time, we acted fast and set up NATO’s Baltic and Eastern Sentry operations and the incidents stopped. 9X
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Sanctions have sent Russia's foreign trade to Soviet-era lows.
Exports now make up just 17.8% of GDP — the lowest in modern Russian history and comparable to the USSR's final years before collapse — United24. 1/
Exports fell from 22.2% of GDP in 2024 to 17.8% in 2025. Imports dropped from 17.8% to 15.2%. Compare that to pre-war levels when exports were typically 25-30% of GDP. 2/
This mirrors 1990-91 Soviet figures almost exactly: exports were 18.2% of GDP in 1990 and 13.3% in 1991. Russia is now as isolated from the global economy as the USSR was before it collapsed. 3/
Russian opposition figure Kara-Murza in WP: Russians have returned to PACE to shape what Russia must look like after Putin and to draft a roadmap for democratic transition
The Council of Europe admitted 15 anti-war Russian opposition figures, four years after expelling Russia.1/
The delegates replace former Kremlin MPs like Pyotr Tolstoy and ex-ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Petra Bayr, President of the Assembly, opened the session by stating: “Russia is not only a regime.” 2/
Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1996. Membership gave Russian citizens access to the European Court of Human Rights.
Over the years, the court issued thousands of rulings in favor of Russians challenging unlawful state actions. 3/
Europe must build its own army to counter Putin. The continent has 450 million people — yet it cannot defend itself without the U.S., writes Max Bergmann in FA.
Raising defense spending to 3.5% of GDP will not replace American ground power in Europe. 1/
In its 2025 National Security Strategy, the Trump administration signaled that the U.S. no longer sees itself as Europe’s long-term security guarantor.
Washington reduced support for Ukraine, imposed tariffs on allies, and questioned NATO’s future role. 2/
Europe’s problem is structural. The continent has around 30 separate militaries, built to operate as auxiliaries under U.S. command. Without American logistics, intelligence, airlift, and command systems, NATO becomes hollow. 3/