BERLIN

Finland’s president on Sunday called for strengthening Ukraine's military capabilities and maintaining maximum pressure on Russia before any peace negotiations begin, outlining a detailed three-phase approach to potential peace talks.

“We need to re-arm Ukraine and put maximum pressure on Russia, which means sanctions, which means frozen assets, so that Ukraine begins these negotiations from a position of strength,” Alexander Stubb said at the weekend Munich Security Conference, coming just a few days before the third anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Finnish leader, drawing from his country's own historical experience with Russia, warned against repeating past mistakes. He highlighted how Finland, during World War II, “maintained independence” but after a Soviet invasion “lost sovereignty to decide which organizations we wanted to be in and then we lost 10% of our territory.”

Stubb firmly rejected any notion of allowing Russia to establish spheres of influence in Europe, describing it as a “Russian fantasy of a new indivisible security order.” He identified Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity as the fundamental issues at stake in the conflict.

In a comprehensive analysis, Stubb detailed how a potential peace process might unfold, starting with a pre-negotiation phase, continuing with a ceasefire, and afterwards the launch of peace negotiations. “A ceasefire is quite often mixed up with a peace process. There are two completely separate things,” he explained, noting that a ceasefire would require international monitoring along a demarcation line.

“It can be the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), it can be the UN, these are not peacekeepers. It's just regular international monitoring and after that, during the actual ceasefire, you start looking at the agenda, and the modalities of the actual peace negotiations and this could take a while,” he said.

The Finnish president said the actual peace negotiations in the third phase are likely to take a long time, and stressed two non-negotiable points: Ukraine's right to pursue EU and NATO membership. “The EU process is ongoing, Ukraine will become European, not Russian, and this is already a big loss for Putin,” Stubb said, stressing that the country’s potential NATO membership should be “a decision for the Ukrainians.”

Following separate phone calls last week between US President Donald Trump and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, speculation is running high over a possible push for a peace deal between the two neighbors, who have been at war since Feb. 24, 2022.