Finland will not hold Trump peace summit, says foreign minister

The Telegraph:  Finland has “completely” ruled out hosting a peace summit between America and Russia, distancing itself from any Donald Trump plan to swiftly end the war in Ukraine if he is re-elected.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, said she would not host any peace talks in the capital, which was the venue for the Cold War-era Helsinki Accords of 1975 and more recently the 2018 Trump-Putin summit.

She said Finland was fully in support of Ukraine’s peace objectives and would only host a summit if Russia showed it was willing to negotiate in good faith, which at this stage looked highly doubtful.

“Like almost everybody else in Europe, we don’t have any political dialogue with Russia at the moment and we are not looking to open any dialogue either, for as long as Russia keeps invading sovereign nations in its neighbourhood,” Ms Valtonen said.

“So that would be the answer in this situation, I would completely rule out such discussions taking place in Helsinki, if there wasn’t a significant move from the side of Russia showing that they want to go back to valuing and respecting international law.”

From left; Harold Wilson with then US president Gerald Ford, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the French president, and Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor at the 1975 security and cooperation conference in Helsinki - AFP/GETTY

Trump has repeatedly claimed he could end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours” if he is re-elected, but so far not elaborated on what his peace plan entails.

Ms Valtonen added: “We only support solutions that are based on international law and the UN charter. And so far, I haven’t seen any proposal on a peace treaty draft, other than that of President Zelensky. So that is the foundation we are happy to build on.”

In 1975 the Helsinki Accords, a major international treaty involving 35 countries – including the US and the USSR – were signed at the end of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The agreement helped to ease tensions between the West and the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, turning a page on the Cuban missile crisis and America’s humiliation in the Vietnam war.

Helsinki also hosted a summit in 1990 between US president George Bush Sr, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev which mainly discussed the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

George Bush Sr and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Helsinki for talks in 1990

When it was announced that Helsinki would be the venue for a major Trump-Putin summit in 2018, it raised hopes that a significant thaw in Russian-US relations might be on the cards.

Trump and Putin were praised at the time for committing to cooperate on tackling terrorism and global cyber-security, as well as securing Israel’s border with Syria.

“As major nuclear powers, we bear special responsibility for maintaining international security,” Putin said then, in a far cry from his rhetoric about global nuclear warfare since his invasion of Ukraine.

Finland, which shares a lengthy and porous land border with Russia, joined Nato as a direct response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and remains one of Kyiv’s strongest supporters in the EU.

Since joining Nato, alongside Sweden, Finland has also signed a security pact granting the US broad access to its military bases – a move that Russia has said it will “not leave unanswered”.