Finland is following the discussions on a possible outcome to the war in Ukraine with particular attention. The new NATO member shares 1,300 kilometers of border with Russia and had to cede 10% of its territory to the Soviet Union at the end of the "Winter War"(between November 1939 and March 1940). For Finnish President Alexander Stubb, the alternative facing Europe is "either the Yalta moment or the Helsinki moment in international relations."

In an interview with Le Monde on Saturday, December 7 in Paris, coinciding with the meeting of US President-elect Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée, Stubb, who had come to attend the ceremony to reopen Notre-Dame Cathedral, said that "we must be very clear with the Russians. [...] If they try to push us towards new European security arrangements, it's very simple for us to say, we already have them from 1975 and the Helsinki Accords, strengthened in 1992 by the Paris Agreements which established the OSCE: the principles are there, we don't need to change. There is no return to Yalta."

"The Yalta moment," said the Finnish leader, was "very much a decision of big powers to divide Europe into spheres of interest, while [the] Helsinki [moment] was a decision to rely on three pillars of international law, including independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty," which implied "the right to decide which organization you want to be a part of."

"As a Finn, I attach great importance to these three key pillars," he continued. "In 1944, with the peace of Stalin, Finland maintained its independence, but it lost territory and it lost sovereignty. And sovereignty for us didn't come back until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and we were able to choose our own fate which for us was in the first phase membership of the EU and in the second phase NATO membership in 2023."

For the same reasons, Stubb is "vehemently opposed" to the option of Finlandization for Ukraine, "which basically means loss of territory and loss of sovereignty. We should never allow the negotiation to go that far. Because I firmly believe that Ukraine not only needs to win the war, but also win the peace."

For him, it's up to the Ukrainians to decide whether a loss of territory "de facto, but not de jure," while retaining a claim on the territories temporarily lost, is acceptable. On the other hand, he said he was "maximalist" on the question of the security guarantees that Ukraine's allies will have to provide as part of any ceasefire, armistice or peace agreement. "We will not send troops during the war but if there was a peace settlement and if there was a necessity for peacekeeping from a position of strength, then those security guarantees have to come from both European states and the US. And then the US decides whether they want to participate in 'boots on the ground' peace-keeping." Cautious, the Finnish president said it is premature to comment on his country's possible participation but did not rule it out on the basis of an international or European mandate.

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