Only China can end the war in Ukraine, Finland’s president says

Stubb’s appeal, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, came as European governments brace for a second Donald Trump administration and are increasingly concerned that Washington may abandon commitments to European security to focus on deterring China.

Many European states, alarmed about the potential spillover of the war in Ukraine to other nations on Russia’s borders, are eager for China to play a bigger role in finding a diplomatic solution. Finland, which joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last year, shares the alliance’s longest frontier with Russia.

“President Xi Jinping holds the keys to a peaceful solution to this conflict because he’s in such a position of power," Stubb said in an interview in Helsinki ahead of the NATO summit in Washington. “We in the West, not even the United States, cannot do that. All we can do is to provide arms to Ukraine to make sure it doesn’t lose its war."

The lopsided nature of the Sino-Russian relationship, especially after Western sanctions imposed in 2022, provides Beijing with sufficient leverage, he added: “China of course is in the driver’s seat. I will be very frank with you: Russia has now turned out to be a vassal state of China."

China has so far refrained from supplying lethal weapons to Russia, but it shields Moscow diplomatically while also providing Russia with an outlet for trade and for acquiring modern technologies, including dual-use items. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who tried to woo Beijing for more than a year, last month voiced his frustration, accusing China of working hand-in-hand with Russia to undermine the peace summit he had organized in Switzerland and of “becoming an instrument in Putin’s hands." China said it boycotted the summit because Russia wasn’t invited.

Xi and Putin met in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday, with the Russian president praising the “golden age" in bilateral ties and the Chinese leader calling to “nurture the unique value of China-Russia relations." They didn’t discuss Chinese peace plans and spent little time on Ukraine during that meeting, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Several European leaders, including Polish President Andrzej Duda, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, have visited Xi in Beijing in recent months, in part to discuss relations with Russia. In his talks with Xi in late June, Duda called on Beijing to help find a diplomatic solution that respects international law. “China’s stance on the Ukraine crisis is to encourage peace talks and seek a political resolution," Xi replied. That stance, he added, “aligns with the interests of the international community, including Europe."

Putin’s recently formulated conditions for opening peace talks—rejected by Ukraine and its backers as essentially a demand for surrender—include a Ukrainian withdrawal from vast territories claimed by Russia but controlled by Kyiv, such as the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, as well as “irreversible" steps to demilitarize Ukraine.

While Finland is one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, not all such backers believe that China could play a positive role in ending the war.

“I have always been of an opinion that this is a European war, and therefore Europe and its allies should be helping Ukraine to win it," said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. “And when asking for help from China, especially now when it is clear that they are helping Russia, we have to understand that the price for China’s involvement would be far higher than anyone would be ready to pay."

In any case, there is little incentive for Xi to spend political capital on diplomacy in Ukraine at this stage, as Beijing benefits from Russia getting weaker and more dependent on it just as the West expends military capabilities that could one day be used in Asia, another senior European official said.

Then, there is the issue of whether Putin would follow Chinese advice.

“Without China, it would be much harder for Russia to prosecute this war—but not impossible," said Alexander Gabuev, a specialist on Sino-Russian relations and director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “The Chinese realize that they have leverage, but they aren’t sure that this leverage is big enough for the war to stop should they remove their support. They understand that Putin is absolutely possessed by this war."

Xi has repeatedly named taking control of Taiwan as China’s strategic priority, and several Republican politicians and strategists close to Trump have called for curtailing U.S. commitments to Ukraine and to Europe, in general, to focus on Asian security. Relations between the U.S. and China have been steadily deteriorating over the past decade.

Finland’s Stubb, who once studied in South Carolina and describes himself as “avidly pro-American," called for de-escalating this rivalry.

“To all my American friends I say, tone it down, find solutions, cooperate," he said. “This is not a Cold War situation where you have a clear ideological fight between the Soviet Union and the United States and where the trade was abysmal in comparison to the interdependence now between the United States and China, let alone Europe and China."

Reducing European security commitments would be a strategic mistake, he added: “I recommend humbly to the United States to keep Europe as their main focus on security. If they want to find some kind of counterbalance to Chinese power, the only way they can do it is through Europe" because of its economic and military importance.

Putin’s ultimate goal remains to restore Russia to its imperial borders of the 19th century, “which of course doesn’t sound very good for Finland," a Russian possession at the time, Stubb said. The first step to that would be to Russify Ukraine, and there the battlefield situation is looking more optimistic than a few months ago as restored U.S. weapons supply begins to flow, he said.

“Of course, I would love to see Ukraine penetrate through the Russian forces and basically drive them out. But right now we are in a stalemate and for all intents and purposes it is a good thing because Russia is decreasing in the level of confidence that it had in the spring," Stubb said. “The tide has changed on the battlefield…Russia will not succeed in breaking through."

Diplomatic efforts to exploit this situation must go hand in hand with growing military and economic assistance for Ukraine, the Finnish president added: “The more we support Ukraine now, the sooner the war ends."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com