US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Washington and NATO allies were “stepping up the pressure” on the Kremlin to end its more than three-year invasion of Ukraine, as he met with in the White House with Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
“Yeah, we are stepping up the pressure,” Trump said in the Oval Office when asked by an AFP reporter if he would increase efforts for a deal.
“We’re stepping it up together. We’re all stepping it up. NATO has been great,” Trump added.
The Kremlin said Wednesday that momentum towards reaching a peace deal in Ukraine had largely vanished following Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska in August.
“Unfortunately, we must admit that the powerful momentum generated by Anchorage in favor of agreements... has largely gone,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to Russian news agencies.
Finland is a newly minted NATO partner, having joined in April 2023, just more than a year after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Prior to that, ever since the end of World War II, Finland had maintained a position of neutrality, sharing a 1,340 km (830 mile) border with Russia, and enduring a complicated relationship with the Kremlin and a reluctance to rock that geopolitical boat.
However, in May 2022, about three months into Moscow’s unprovoked incursion across Ukraine’s border, both Finland and its Nordic neighbor Sweden recognized the very real awakening of Russian imperialism and immediately applied for NATO membership.
Stubb began his state visit to Washington by congratulating Trump on helping to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip this week, and publically expressed confidence that the administration could effect another such deal in Ukraine.
“I think this one will be the next big one,” Stubb told reporters.