The Kremlin call:
How talking to Putin exposed Europe’s deepest rift over Ukraine

The leaders of Finland and Norway were slammed for reaching out to Russia — but Europe still can’t find a better way to influence Donald Trump’s peace talks.

By TIM ROSS
in Helsinki

^{Photo-illustration by Mr.Nelson design for POLITICO}

Beneath the chandeliers and oil paintings of his Presidential Palace, Finland’s president Alexander Stubb sat down next to his old friend Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian prime minister, to call Vladimir Putin.

They hoped such a dramatic and direct intervention with Russia’s leader would demonstrate European resolve.

Instead, the conversation on a damp autumn morning in Helsinki triggered the biggest rift among Nordic allies since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and exposed Europe’s wider divisions over how to deal with Moscow at a pivotal moment in the push for peace.

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As Russian and Ukrainian negotiators prepare for talks with Donald Trump’s envoys in Abu Dhabi this week, the fallout from the call is still reverberating across Europe. Governments are arguing over who should represent Europe in future negotiations and remain divided over a question at the heart of the debate: Does engaging Putin help deliver peace, or simply reward aggression?

Underlying European anxiety is another dilemma: Can America be trusted to broker a fair deal for them and most of all for Ukraine?

EU leaders will grapple with these questions at an informal summit in Dublin this week. Few involved expect them to agree. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in New York, on Sept. 22, 2026. | Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

In an interview with POLITICO in Oslo, Støre explained why he and Stubb decided to call a leader waging hybrid warfare on Europe and killing Ukrainian civilians with daily drone and missile strikes.

“We work closely with our European partners in supporting Ukraine, but the only voice reaching Moscow comes from Washington,” Støre said. “And you know, we have good and open relations with the American negotiators, with the American administration, but this [war] happens in Europe. And living month by month, thinking that this war will end by Europe not talking to Moscow, I think, is an illusion.”

Other countries sharing a border — and a history —  with Putin’s Russia profoundly disagree. 

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“Europe should not be in a mediator’s position,” Estonia’s Prime Minister Kristen Michal told POLITICO in another interview. “You should not take the role of trying to please the dictator.”

Based on interviews with politicians, diplomats and officials, many granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, this is the inside story of a phone call that shook Europe.

The Trump shock

Europe has struggled for influence over the stop-start Ukraine peace process ever since Trump returned to the White House in early 2025, promptly picked up the phone to Putin and ended U.S. financial assistance to Kyiv. 

Trump’s interventions shattered the transatlantic consensus built under his predecessor Joe Biden, offering Putin the prospect of an advantageous ceasefire and a return to the international fold. 

The U.S.-Iran war this year interrupted momentum but Trump returned to the topic of Ukraine again in October, criticizing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for continuing to attack Russian energy infrastructure, while declaring that Putin’s side had been “fine”. 

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Fearing the negotiations were drifting toward collapse, Stubb and Støre intervened. Støre hosted Zelenskyy and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo in an attempt to repair relations. Stubb, who also attended, declared the meeting on Oct. 20 had put the peace process “back on track.”

But 24 hours later, Witkoff again stunned European leaders by meeting Putin in St. Petersburg and praising him as a “humanitarian.”

After consulting Zelenskyy, the two Nordic leaders concluded they could not leave Trump, Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as the only Western figures speaking directly to Putin.

Old friends

Stubb and Støre have known each other for years and worked closely on Russian affairs when they both served as foreign ministers. They talk and text frequently — and like to pair up on key files despite coming from different political backgrounds. 

They had quietly explored the idea of a joint call to the Kremlin for months and concluded that reviving momentum would be critical ahead of renewed negotiations in Abu Dhabi.

Europeans, many officials privately acknowledge, no longer trusted Washington to defend either Europe’s interests or Ukraine’s.

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“We have to ask the question in Europe if we feel that someone else should have the contact and the discussion on our behalf,” one EU government official said. “Is the feeling that the U.S. should own our objectives?”

“It’s important that Donald Trump is not the only leader from the West who talks to Putin,” another senior European official said. “We need pro-Ukraine leaders putting their messages to Putin too.”

So, almost five years after Russia’s diplomatic isolation began, Stubb and Støre decided to call the Kremlin. The Nordic team reached out to Putin’s officials and agreed parameters for the conversation. Each side would take turns to deliver their prepared messages, without interruption from the other.

Omens in oils

Some of the omens were inauspicious from the start. 

As the leaders sat next to each other at the long cabinet table in Stubb’s plush presidential salon on Oct. 27, two large, gilt-framed oil paintings loomed over them, depicting battle scenes from the Crimean War. One canvas shows an Anglo-French naval force retreating under fire on Finnish territory, a reminder of an era two centuries ago when Finland itself was part of the Russian Empire. 

According to some accounts, Putin shared his own keen interest in Russia’s past with the two Nordic leaders — delivering a lengthy lesson on Slavic history and the origins of the war in Ukraine. 

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One senior official familiar with the matter said Stubb and Støre listened patiently during the 90-minute conversation. Other European officials briefed on the call denied that Putin had given the two leaders a history lecture at all, and suggested this claim was Russian spin aimed at humiliating the Europeans. 

Støre himself said: “I was present. He didn’t.” Putin has well-worn arguments about the origins of the war, he added. “But in all fairness, he can give his explanation, and we respond to that.”

For their part, the Nordic pair first gave Putin Zelenskyy’s messages — that territorial boundaries can only be discussed at leader level, face to face, and first there must be de-escalation measures. Stubb and his friend then turned to the matter of Baltic Sea security and the need to keep the waterway open for trade. 

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Moscow on Nov. 3, 2026. | Sofia Sandurskaya/Sputnik via Getty Images

One reason for holding the call was to try to judge Putin’s state of mind, according to officials. The Norwegian leader said Putin was “rational” and “professional” on the phone. “His arguments were perfectly clearly transmitted.”

Putin took the idea of talks in Abu Dhabi seriously and told the Nordic pair he would instruct his negotiators to prepare for the meeting to explore if progress is possible. “The fact that he picks up that phone, that we have, you know, other ways of reaching, I think that signals, at least that there’s a readiness to sit down.”

But afterwards, Støre was still not convinced that Putin was genuinely open to a deal. Despite their efforts, the Norwegian and Finnish team do not expect a major breakthrough in Abu Dhabi.

Baltic backlash

When Stubb’s office announced the surprise call had happened, the diplomatic blowback played out live in public.

By coincidence, the leaders of Denmark and Sweden, among others, were already gathered in Helsinki for a Nordic Council meeting. Confronted by TV crews, they made little effort to hide their irritation. 

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“I’m very skeptical about this Norwegian and Finnish initiative,” Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told broadcasters. “I think we should keep Europe united rather than going it alone.”

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said peace must come through “strength” rather than “appeasement”. Lithuania also criticized the move. 

In private, some diplomats were even harsher. “There are too many middle-aged men who want to end up in the history books having solved this war,” one EU diplomat said. “Putin is just gaining from opening up a more normalized dialogue with the rest of the world — and continuing to bomb and kill innocent people in Ukraine.” 

European Council President António Costa, Zelenskyy and Danish PM Mette Frederiksen on Oct. 16, 2026 in Brussels. | Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga via Getty Images

Their complaints were not simply over the decision to engage with Putin, but that Stubb and Støre had not properly coordinated with allies beforehand.

Officials familiar with the preparations for the call deny this, insisting that Frederiksen and others including the leadership in France, Germany, and the U.S. were told about the call before it happened. It may just have been that Frederiksen expected more advance warning, and a genuine say over the plan. She said her Finnish and Norwegian counterparts had failed to coordinate the call with “the rest of us.” 

Moscow endorsement

Støre is defiant. “She is right, because I did not ask — we did not ask for permission,” he told POLITICO. “We consult each other in the Nordic family, but it is not a mechanism which is that, you know, doing this requires a yes from all the Nordics or from 27 Europeans or beyond.”

Privately, some officials think Støre aggravated the wound in the immediate aftermath, when he pointed out that the EU had been divided on Russia since the war began. “It’s true — it’s just not his place to say it,” one official said. “Norway is not in the EU.” 

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Stubb and Støre say they never sought to speak for anyone other than the countries they lead, which both border Russia. They talked to Zelenskyy at length before the call to agree what to say to Putin and then briefed him again afterwards. 

They had hoped their initiative would bolster Zelenskyy. Instead, the backlash became so intense that the Ukrainian leader stepped in to defend them. “They truly help us,” he said. 

The two Nordic leaders also won an endorsement from Moscow. “I believe it was the right thing to do,” Putin said. “After all, there are some people in Europe who do not want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia … but seek to establish some kind of constructive dialogue.” 

Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre welcomes Finnish President Alexander Stubb in Oslo on Oct. 8, 2026. | Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB via Getty Images

Putin’s comments are unlikely to soothe lingering resentments between Nordic neighbors. As one official put it, there may be some lasting “family trauma” for those regional leaders who were not included in the Putin call plan. 

For all the northern angst, the episode also exposed a harder truth for Ukraine and its supporters. Despite Trump’s midterm election defeats, he is still dictating the pace of talks. Europe, meanwhile, has no one to match America’s booming voice when it matters in the room. 

Clea Caulcutt, Hans von der Burchard, Veronika Melkozerova and Laurens Cerulus contributed reporting.

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