Finnish and Norwegian Leaders Hold Joint Call With Putin on Ending Ukraine War

Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a joint phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, a rare contact between European leaders and the Russian president, to discuss future negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The call was made from Helsinki. The two leaders' joint statement said they started the call to convey messages directly to Putin and that they did not speak for Europe as a whole. Stubb called the talk "frank and substantive" and said ending the war requires direct discussions. He said the idea came from an October 20 meeting in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, after which Witkoff traveled to Saint Petersburg to meet Putin. Ukraine was consulted beforehand, and Zelensky spoke to both leaders afterward and thanked them for their support. Putin said "confrontational" EU and NATO policies were prolonging the war. U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to hold trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi next month.

The left-leaning New York Times headlines a split among European leaders. Its excerpt describes the call as part of an effort to push talks forward but says not every European leader welcomed it. It gives no detail here on who objected. The right-leaning Washington Examiner frames the call as breaking an unwritten rule against speaking directly with a "dictator," calls it a surprise, and ties it to the coming Abu Dhabi talks. It quotes the joint statement at length and notes that Ukraine was consulted and that Støre had earlier welcomed the talks. Both sides report the call and its aim of advancing negotiations. They differ on emphasis: European disagreement on the left, norm-breaking and diplomacy on the right. BBC News and The Hindu largely repeat the facts, adding Putin's response and the Oslo background.