Putin to Meet Finnish President as Threat of Cold War Grows

By Eero Vassinen and Kasper Viita

Finnish President Sauli Niinistoe will meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin today in an effort to defuse tensions he said risk dragging the world into a new cold war.
The two will meet in the southern Russian town of Sochi following an invitation from Putin first made a year ago, Niinistoe told reporters in Helsinki yesterday. The encounter will mark Putin’s first meeting with a European leader or head of state since he spoke with German ChancellorAngela Merkel in Brazil during the World Cup in July.
“I have a feeling that we’re on the brink of cold war,” Niinistoe said. He plans to use the discussion with Putin to find a way “to bring this terrible spiral of mistrust to an end,” he said.
Finland, which unlike its Baltic neighbors never joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has a longer border with Russia than the other 27 European Union members combined. Its economy is more exposed to the fallout of Russian tensions than that of any other euro member, trade figure
s show. Prime Minister Alexander Stubb has hinted at the need for economic compensation should Finland be hit disproportionately.
Finland and the Soviet Union fought two wars between 1939 and 1944. While Finland remained independent, it ceded about 10 percent of its land mass and paid $300 million in war reparations to its neighbor.
“Finland particularly has an incentive to be active here, to promote security and stability,” Niinistoe said.

Death Toll

The Finnish head of state, whose powers are largely ceremonial, said he’s also looking into visiting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Niinistoe “has been in contact” with “western partners” to discuss the meeting with Putin, he said. Putin has maintained phone contact with key leaders from the U.S. and Europe. He spoke with European Commission President Jose Barroso yesterday and with Merkel last week, as well as with U.S. President Barack Obama on Aug. 1.
Meeting face-to-face is intended “to get an open dialogue going” as “no peace will be achieved by phone,” Niinistoe said.
Since Russia annexed Crimea in March, relations between Putin and his counterparts in Europe and the U.S. have steadily deteriorated. Ukraine is now trying to dislodge pro-Russian rebels from strongholds in Donetsk and Luhansk in the country’s east. The death toll doubled in the past two weeks to more than 2,000, Agence France-Presse reported Aug. 13, citing United Nations data.

Russian Ambition

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday he’s concerned that Putin has ambitions that go “beyond Ukraine.”
“The Russian ambition is to establish a sphere of Russian influence in the near neighborhood,” he told reporters in Reykjavik.
Ukraine began to send its own aid supplies to the country’s war-torn east yesterday as a Russian convoy with emergency supplies was reported to be nearing the border. Ukraine’s government said this week it would allow the humanitarian aid carried by hundreds of trucks from Russia through the frontier if officials can inspect it and the Red Cross distributes it.
Stubb told reporters at parliament in Helsinki yesterday that aid trucks sent by Russia to eastern Ukraine should only proceed if Ukraine “wants the aid and accepts it.”
He said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat newspaper today that the Finnish economy is “in a very serious situation” and the government may reduce forecasts for gross domestic product.