Putin Welcomes Rare Call From Finnish and Norwegian Leaders, Breaking Europe's Taboo on Direct Contact

At a Kremlin press conference on Thursday, Vladimir Putin said he was glad the call had happened. The call, held on Tuesday, brought him together with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. The account comes from remarks carried by Russian state media, and it describes a break with the practice most European leaders have followed since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022: avoiding direct contact with Moscow.

According to their offices, the two Nordic leaders initiated the conversation. They wanted to pass messages directly to Putin about future negotiations to help end the war. They framed it as a follow-up to their meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo on October 20. The BBC reported that it was the first direct contact between Putin and European leaders in more than a year, and that the Nordic leaders said they were not acting on behalf of Europe as a whole.

Putin, per a transcript of the press conference, called the call the right thing to do. He said there are people in Europe who, unlike others, do not want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia but want some kind of constructive dialogue. He said Russia would support steps toward restoring full-fledged and comprehensive relations with European countries, whether through the EU or bilaterally. He added that Russia does not want a war with Europe and that Western efforts to defeat Russia strategically had failed. Moscow has long said it is open to normalization while blaming Brussels for cutting ties.

Not everyone in Europe welcomed the move. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen criticized it, saying it had not been coordinated with European partners and questioning whether it would accomplish anything. The disagreement exposed a divide inside the EU over whether to talk to Moscow directly. Some European officials argue that outreach to the Kremlin risks legitimizing Russia's position without winning concessions. Supporters say dialogue is needed to reach a settlement.

The content of the call is itself contested. The Financial Times reported that Putin spent much of it lecturing his counterparts on Russian and Slavic history. Norway and the Kremlin both rejected that description, though neither offered a detailed account of what was said. Stubb, nicknamed in the media the Trump whisperer for his frequent talks with President Donald Trump on Ukraine, has pointed to Finland's long experience with Russia. The two countries share a 1,340-kilometer border, and Finland kept peaceful if sometimes uneasy relations with Moscow through the Cold War.

The timing sits within a crowded backdrop. Reports describe growing tension between Kyiv and Washington after Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports, then waived further restrictions when Zelensky refused to stop strikes on Russian oil refineries, which Trump blamed for rising fuel prices. Moscow, for its part, accuses European leaders of sabotaging the 2022 peace talks and of undermining Trump's efforts to broker a deal. Meanwhile, eight Nordic and Baltic countries have committed equipment to NATO's Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, bringing PURL funding to $3.3 billion since July 2025. Finland has moved to lift a decades-old ban on hosting nuclear weapons, saying its security environment has fundamentally and significantly changed, and the EU has urged its 450 million citizens to keep at least 72 hours of food, water and supplies.

The source is a thinly sourced account that leans heavily on Russian state media, and the call's substance remains unverified. What comes next is expected in Abu Dhabi, where U.S.-mediated talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States are due in the near future. Watch whether those talks move toward a settlement, and whether European capitals settle on a shared approach to Moscow.