{"id":778,"date":"2026-10-27T20:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T20:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=778"},"modified":"2026-10-27T20:00:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T20:00:22","slug":"finland-norway-leaders-rare-call-putin-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=778","title":{"rendered":"TWO NORDIC LEADERS JUST PICKED UP THE PHONE AND CALLED PUTIN! | Ninety minutes, \u201cfrank and substantive,\u201d big differences, and Sweden grumbling that Europe should stop going solo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>RING RING, MOSCOW! Finland&#8217;s President <strong>Alexander Stubb<\/strong> and Norway&#8217;s Prime Minister <strong>Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re<\/strong> held a joint call with <strong>Vladimir Putin<\/strong>, rare direct contact between the Russian leader and European heads of government, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c6vgj813mlelo\">BBC<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>90-minute<\/strong> call, held from Helsinki, was meant to \u201cconvey messages directly regarding future negotiations\u201d on ending the war in Ukraine. \u201cIt will not be achieved through silence,\u201d Stubb said. He called the talk \u201cfrank and substantive.\u201d St\u00f8re admitted there were \u201cbig differences in views.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Putin didn&#8217;t budge. The Kremlin said he told them a \u201cjust and lasting peace\u201d requires Russia&#8217;s \u201clegal interests\u201d be taken into account \u201cfully and unconditionally,\u201d and he repeated his line about the \u201croot causes\u201d of the war. All three reportedly agreed to keep talking by phone.<\/p>\n<p>Stubb says the call was prepared with Ukraine and the US after a meeting in Oslo last week with Volodymyr Zelensky and US envoy Steve Witkoff. Zelensky says he was debriefed afterward. The first US-Ukraine-Russia talks of the year are tentatively planned for early November in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n<p>Not all of Europe loved the freelancing. Denmark and Sweden said they weren&#8217;t consulted, and Sweden&#8217;s Ulf Kristersson said \u201cEurope should stick together rather than going solo.\u201d Stubb and St\u00f8re are the first European leaders to call Putin since Emmanuel Macron in July 2025.<\/p>\n<p><em>Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c6vgj813mlelo\">BBC News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ninety minutes, \u201cfrank and substantive,\u201d big differences, and Sweden grumbling that Europe should stop going solo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-nordic-putin-call-1027.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}