According to the Finnish president, the Russian Federation seeks to “continue the war at least until the fall in order to maximize its territorial conquests.”
Stubb considers unlikely to meet in the near future the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky with the illegitimate Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was discussed at the Summit of European leaders with Donald Trump in the White House.
If the goal was a bilateral meeting two weeks after negotiations in Washington on August 18, then it is unlikely to take place, the president of Finland noted.
The Russian tactics of tightening time continues, summarized Stubb.
Context
On August 18, in Washington, a meeting of Trump and European leaders took place, including was Zelensky. They talked about guarantees of security and the upcoming meeting of Zelensky with Putin, as well as their trilateral meeting with Trump. On the same day, the US President called Putin, and later stated that he began organizing a meeting between him and Zelensky. However, the Kremlin began to put forward conditions.
The White House was repeated on August 19 that Putin agreed to a bilateral meeting, but after that the Russian Foreign Ministry once again said that negotiations at the highest level “needed to prepare the most thoroughly.”
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made several statements (in particular about the alleged protection of “Russian people”, about the deprivation of the grounds for recognizing the independence of Ukraine and on the participation of the Russian Federation in discussing guarantees of the security of Ukraine), which, according to media assessment, actually destroyed Russia's negotiations with the United States and called into question the prospects for peace negotiations of Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
Zelensky said that his bilateral meeting with Putin should take place in “neutral” Europe. The head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andrei Ermak in an interview with Putin, published in an interview on August 21, said there are several options for meeting Zelensky with Putin, among them – Geneva, Istanbul, Vatican, Saudi Arabia.
