The Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, is the latest leader playing middle man in the effort to end the war in Ukraine.Mr. Niinistö had a phone call with Vladimir Putin Friday after an earlier call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. His office said in a statement that Mr. Niinistö informed the Russian strongman that Mr. Zelensky was prepared to hold direct talks with Mr. Putin.The statement said Mr. Niinistö called for an immediate ceasefire and the safe evacuation of civilians, and said the two leaders spoke about the security of nuclear energy facilities in Ukraine.Mr. Niinistö, while not as powerful in Finland as the prime minister, Sanna Marin, is one of the few Western leaders who has kept a regular dialogue with Mr. Putin ever since the Finnish leader took office in 2012. Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that the phone conversation today lasted for one hour. Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia and historical ties between the two counties run deep: Helsinki’s showpiece Uspenski Cathedral, with its golden cupolas, looks like it could have been airlifted in from a neighborhood in Moscow — and is in fact Western Europe’s largest orthodox church. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month has had the unintended consequence of thrusting Finland, and to a lesser extent Sweden, into the geopolitical spotlight. Neither country is a member of NATO, but support among those who live in the Nordic nations for joining the Western military alliance has recently surged to record levels. A poll recently commissioned by Finnish broadcaster YLE showed that, for the first time, more than 50 percent of Finns support joining NATO. In neighboring Sweden, a similar poll showed those in favor of NATO membership outnumber those against.The attack on Ukraine also prompted both Finland and Sweden to break with their policies of not providing arms to countries at war by sending assault rifles and anti-tank weapons to Kiev. For Sweden, it is the first time the country has offered military aid since 1939, when it helped Finland fend off a Soviet invasion.Just how neutral Finland has actually been since the Cold War wound down is open to question. In an interview with Greece’s Kathimerini newspaper this week, a former Finnish prime minister, Alexander Stubb, said: “Since we joined the European Union and became NATO partners, Finland’s neutrality has just been a fairy tale. The only country that says we’re neutral is Russia.” He added that Finland “basically has everything, except Article 5,” a reference to NATO’s famous mutual defense clause. Finland was neutral during the Cold War, Mr. Stubb said, but “has been anything but since it ended. We picked a side, and we will stick to that side in the name of our national security.”While it was not made immediately clear either from wire reports or the Finnish press what exactly Messrs. Niinistö and Putin discussed on the phone today, something Mr. Stubb told Kathimerini may give a clue: The Russian leader, he said, “knows that dictators go either in a casket or to prison or with asylum to another country. And this is why he will go to a big war and then to a big peace. Or he will take it to the end, destroying Ukraine and turning it into a failed state.” Another possibility, he added, is that Mr. Putin “will opt for a ceasefire and try to establish a west and east Ukraine.”In the meantime, tensions ripple between Kiev and Moscow and all the way, it appears, to Helsinki: “Anxious Russians flee by the hundreds each day into neighboring Finland,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported today. According to the CBC, trains from the east pulling into Helsinki’s central train station “are packed, transporting nearly 700 passengers from Russia each day, as people seek to escape the uncertainty and fear the war in Ukraine has brought to their own country.”
