Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said some of the discussion around the notion that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine has left him “a bit baffled” because Russian President Vladimir Putin has “failed in every and each one of his strategic aims.”
In the initial weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its forces sought to take control of Kyiv and remove the pro-West Zelensky government from power, effectively returning the country to Moscow’s sphere of influence—an objective that was not achieved.
Since then, Russia has said its war aims are what it describes as the “liberation” of Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, the demilitarization of the country, preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, and international recognition of its claims over Crimea and other Ukrainian territories it occupies.
The U.S. is attempting to broker an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with disagreement over territorial concessions being the key blocker to an agreement. European allies say Russia wants to fight on so it can take more of Ukraine, and that Putin is misleading the world on peace. But Moscow accuses Europe of fueling the conflict to weaken Russia for strategic advantage.
“On the narrative of the war, this is something that I’m a little bit baffled [by] both in the international discourse and perhaps in some of the things that we hear also coming from the United States,” said Stubb, who was speaking on a Ukraine panel at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday morning.
“But let’s make this clear: Putin has failed in every and each one of his strategic aims.”
He listed several of what he said were Russia’s strategic failures. One was its inability to capture the whole of Ukraine for Russia as originally intended, and Kyiv is now moving towards European Union membership instead.
Another was the invasion triggering the enlargement of NATO, which now includes Finland and Sweden, though the White House has ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine.
Stubb also said Moscow is no longer able to project power around the world to the same degree as before, as seen in recent events involving its allies Venezuela and Iran, as well as its waning influence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
And Stubb said Russia’s small battlefield gains come at huge human and financial cost to the country, with thousands of troops dying every week and a sanctions-hit war economy juggling very high inflation and interest rates.
“I don’t think that the argument that Russia does not want to end the war because it believes that it can advance holds,” Stubb said. Instead, Russia “does not want to end this war because it is too expensive for Putin to end, he will not be able to pay the Russian soldiers.”
“So the big dilemma that we right now have is that: How can we force Russia to end this war? And there are only two things that we can do,” Stubb said. “One, continue to provide Ukraine with everything [that is] possible, and two, put more economic pressure on Russia. And then we will see that Ukraine will have won this war at the end of the day.”
This is a developing article. Updates to follow.
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