Alexander Stubb, Finland’s President has said that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin must not decide the fate of Ukraine over the head of its President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This comes as Trump and Putin are scheduled to speak by telephone today, Monday, May 19, 2025.
Trump is to speak with Putin as part of his long-running effort to end the war set off by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The call with Putin will be followed by a call with Ukraine’s leader and NATO allies.
The phone calls, according to Trump, are aimed at discussing ways to stop the war’s “bloodbath.”Trump wrote on Truth Social, “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END.”
Later, Kremlin Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Russian news agencies that preparations were under way for a conversation between Putin and Trump.
Stubb said that there was a chance, depending on how the phone call goes, that the US Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal would introduce into Congress this week a sanctions package to make Russia’s finances untenable.
Stubb has been in near daily contact with Graham, who describes the sanctions package as “bone-crushing.”
“If we were to pull it together, we could say that Zelenskyy is patient and President Trump is starting to be impatient, but in the right direction, that is, towards Russia.”
Alexander Stubb
Stubb noted that threatening sanctions and not implementing them would not cause a credibility problem as long as the West was making Putin react.
It is widely expected that Graham, who discussed his sanctions package with European Foreign Ministers last week, will adapt the bill’s provisions so it is aimed at foreign firms that import Russian energy.
Graham, a Trump loyalist, is portraying his sanctions as an adjunct to Trump’s tariffs policy and not an alternative.
The initial package contained plans to impose 500% tariffs on the goods of any country trading in energy with Russia, a blunderbuss style of policy Trump has already reversed in his trade war.
Also, Stubb said that any European contact with Putin would be through the E3 leadership of Britain, France and Germany. “At the top level we should not go solo,” he said.
Stubb, one of the small group of European leaders with the ear of Trump, stated that he had been using his influence to persuade the president to revise his view of Russia’s economic and military strength.
Talks Follow Inconclusive Direct Russia-Ukraine Talks
Trump’s planned phone calls follow the first Moscow-Kyiv talks in three years
The talks held in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Friday, May 16, 2025, were the first time the sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
However, the brief talks failed to yield a ceasefire agreement.
It only yielded an agreement to swap 1,000 prisoners of war, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such exchange since the war began.
Ahead of his call with the Russian President, EU and UK leaders spoke with Trump.
A Spokesperson revealed that the leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for Putin to take peace talks seriously.
The Spokesperson added that they also raised the use of sanctions if Russia failed to engage seriously in a ceasefire and concerted peace talks.
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