He said that he was talking with Trump in the evening of August 21, and received signs that the patience of the head of the White House would run out.
Stubb recalled that Putin sat down at the negotiating table in Alaska only after Trump announced that he would introduce 50% tariffs against India, which buys oil, weapons and gas in the Russian Federation.
According to the Finnish president, two things can put an end to the patience of Trump – the time when Russia uses a typical tactics of delay, and the constant attacks of the Russian Federation for civil goals.
At the same time, Stubb considers it very unlikely that Putin and Zelensky will meet in a week and a half.
After that, Trump's patience may run out, the president of Finland emphasized.
“There is only one person who can force Putin to conclude the world, and this is President Trump. He is the only person whom Putin listens, and, frankly, the only person whom Putin is afraid,” said Stubb in an interview with Yle.
Context
On August 18, in Washington, a meeting of Trump and European leaders took place, including There was President of Ukraine Vladimir 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.
