HELSINKI (The Thursday Times) — The Kremlin on Friday denied a German newspaper’s report that Russian negotiators had demanded Finland leave NATO, as part of informal proposals made during this week’s US-mediated talks on Ukraine in Abu Dhabi.
“I am not aware of this. No, no such conditions have been put forward. This definitely was not discussed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Russian media.
The newspaper reported on Friday that the proposals came from within President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and were shared with European representatives on the sidelines of the talks. It said they went well beyond Ukraine and aimed at a new European security order, but that the document was one of several unofficial drafts and it was unclear whether Putin had endorsed it.
What the report said
According to the report, Moscow proposed keeping all the Ukrainian territory it now occupies and taking the whole of the Donbas, including the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk still held by Kyiv. Ukraine would stay permanently outside military alliances, ruling out NATO membership but leaving the way open to the European Union, and the ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv would be demilitarised.
The proposals also called for NATO to give up military bases in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and for Finland to leave the alliance. On Moldova, the plan reportedly envisaged a federal republic including Transnistria and Gagauzia. In return, Russia would withdraw nuclear weapons and intermediate-range missiles from Belarus and pull its troops out of Transnistria, the report said.
‘Absolutely outrageous’
Finland’s defence minister, Antti Häkkänen, rejected the reported demands. “Such matters are in no way a matter for negotiation. Russia knows that. This is absolutely outrageous to even suggest such a thing,” he said.
Häkkänen said Russia had pushed similar ideas for years, including in its 2021 demands before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was trying to widen the talks to cover Europe’s security arrangements rather than negotiating in good faith.
Finland applied to join NATO in May 2022, three months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ending decades of military non-alignment, and became a member in April 2023. It shares a border of about 1,340 kilometres with Russia. Russian officials have long argued that Western countries promised not to expand NATO eastwards, a claim the alliance rejects.
The Abu Dhabi talks
The talks on 10 and 11 November were the first meetings involving Russia, Ukraine, and the United States since February, with the US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff taking part. They produced agreement on a large prisoner exchange but no wider breakthrough, and put Europe’s security on the table alongside Ukraine’s.
Since then, Putin has told the US envoys that any foreign troops in Ukraine would be targets, while saying European countries could join the talks. On Thursday, Finland’s military confirmed a strike on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland area, which Ukraine said it carried out.
