Despite the generally negative stance within the EU and Washington’s central role in negotiations with Moscow, Norway and Finland have recently expressed their willingness talk to Kremlin directly to protect their own geographical interests, without demanding political concessions from it in return.
The agreement increased the joint cod quota by 14%, to 325,000 tonnes, and preserved scientific cooperation between the two countries. Its importance went well beyond fishing. Norway had demonstrated that, where national interests required it, cooperation with Moscow remained possible regardless of the wider political confrontation.
On October 27, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre took that logic into considerably more sensitive territory. From Helsinki, they initiated a 90-minute conversation with President Putin. For Finland’s presidency, it marked a return to direct contact with Moscow after more than four years. The previous confirmed call had taken place in May 2022, when Sauli Niinistö informed Putin of Finland’s intention to seek NATO membership.
Both governments continue supporting Kiev and maintaining sanctions against Russia. Their call was prepared in consultation with Ukraine, and its purpose was to convey messages ahead of renewed negotiations involving Moscow, Washington and Kiev.
Still, the diplomatic significance was difficult to miss. Two governments firmly embedded in the Western security camp had concluded that maintaining distance from President Putin was no longer sufficient to protect their interests.
The wall of diplomatic isolation had developed a visible crack. More importantly, that crack appeared among the countries with perhaps the strongest geographical reasons to take European security seriously.
Geography Has Its Own Foreign Policy
Norway had effectively explained the reasoning two weeks earlier.
On October 13, addressing a conference devoted to Russia, the Norwegian foreign ministry’s state secretary offered a striking admission: “We cannot escape our own geography.”
The statement came within a speech highly critical of Moscow. Norway would continue backing Ukraine, strengthening its defences and participating in sanctions. But its representative also acknowledged the necessity of maintaining selected channels with Russia for border management, fisheries, maritime rescue and military risk reduction.
Norway shares nearly 198 kilometres of land border with Russia, alongside maritime spaces of far greater strategic importance. Russia’s Northern Fleet and a substantial proportion of its strategic nuclear capabilities operate in the surrounding region.
That reality cannot be managed exclusively through diplomatic condemnation. Military vessels still operate near one another, aircraft patrol areas of strategic interest, and shared natural resources require rules that both sides recognise.
The fisheries’ agreement illustrates the point particularly well. Fish stocks move between Norwegian and Russian waters without regard for diplomatic disputes. Scientific data must be exchanged, catch limits coordinated and competing economic interests reconciled. Oslo could have allowed political confrontation to obstruct those arrangements, but Norwegian coastal communities would have paid part of the price.
Finland faces a different set of pressures.
Having joined NATO in 2023, Helsinki has substantially altered its security relationship with Moscow. Its land border crossings with Russia remain closed, and Finnish policy continues to emphasise military preparedness and support for Ukraine.
Yet, Finland also possesses the longest external border with Russia among EU and NATO members. Helsinki cannot relocate itself away from its eastern neighbour.
Stubb’s decision therefore deserves attention. His government has not abandoned its existing security commitments, but the president has acknowledged that they do not eliminate the need for direct communication.
The October 27 conversation followed consultations in Oslo involving Stubb, Støre, Zelensky and American envoy Steve Witkoff on October 20. The following day, Witkoff met President Putin in St Petersburg. The Nordic initiative thus emerged from an active negotiating sequence rather than a spontaneous attempt at reconciliation.
It reflected a distinction increasingly overlooked in European political debate: deterrence and communication serve different purposes. A country may strengthen its military position while maintaining channels intended to prevent accidents, convey intentions and reduce the risk of uncontrolled escalation.
For countries bordering Russia, that distinction carries immediate practical consequences.
What Moscow Gained Without Changing Course
The conversation offered President Putin a limited but meaningful diplomatic advantage. The Finnish and Norwegian leaders requested the call themselves. They had not secured a Russian change of position beforehand, nor did Moscow publicly promise concessions in exchange for renewed contact.
The conversation covered President Putin’s recent meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff and the earlier consultations in Oslo. Moscow maintained its established negotiating position, insisting that any lasting settlement must address Russia’s security interests.
Stubb’s own remarks to the Nordic Council were equally revealing. He acknowledged that Putin’s positions contained no surprises. The Nordic leaders had urged Moscow to negotiate seriously, but the conversation produced no publicly confirmed breakthrough.
For Russian diplomacy, the immediate result lay elsewhere.
The Kremlin announced that the leaders had agreed to maintain direct telephone contacts. That commitment did not amount to restored relations, but it meant the conversation was not necessarily a one-off exception.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saw little new in the Nordic initiative. Speaking shortly after the call, he said the Europeans had apparently offered no new ideas, interpreting the initiative as another attempt to enter a negotiating process from which European governments had struggled to secure a meaningful role.
Moscow could welcome renewed contact without presenting itself as the party seeking readmission to European diplomatic circles.
President Putin reinforced that message on October 29. He expressed support for restoring relations with European countries, praised the Finnish and Norwegian initiative despite criticism from other capitals, and warned that a wider confrontation would have no winners.
He also raised freedom of navigation in the Baltic Sea, linking diplomatic tensions to the danger of further maritime disruption.
Receiving calls from governments that previously preferred distance carries its own diplomatic advantage. It allows Moscow to demonstrate its continuing relevance to European security discussions while preserving its established negotiating demands.
Russia has not secured acceptance of those demands from Helsinki or Oslo. Yet the Nordic initiative suggests that even governments unwilling to accommodate Moscow politically are beginning to distinguish between rejecting its positions and refusing to communicate with its leadership.
Europe’s Self-Imposed Isolation
The strongest objections came from Copenhagen. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen criticised the initiative as insufficiently coordinated with European partners. She questioned what Finland and Norway expected to achieve and warned against individual governments pursuing separate diplomatic approaches.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson acknowledged that he had not been informed in advance. His reaction, however, was more nuanced: he also recognised the value of conversations capable of contributing to peace.
The disagreement revealed a question which European governments have struggled to resolve: who is entitled to speak to Moscow, and on whose behalf?
Stubb and Støre explicitly stated that they represented their own countries, not Europe as a whole. They consulted Kiev before making the call and briefed Zelensky afterwards. Even these precautions did not eliminate concerns about coordination among European capitals. Meanwhile, Washington has remained central to efforts to restart negotiations.
That creates an uncomfortable situation for Europe. Its governments have invested heavily in Ukraine’s military and financial survival, yet the principal diplomatic exchanges increasingly involve American, Russian and Ukrainian representatives.
On October 28, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said European representatives would not be invited to the forthcoming trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi.
Two days later, Ushakov confirmed that Moscow and Washington had begun coordinating a November date. No specific day had been agreed, with the timing dependent on wider international circumstances.
The prospect of further talks remains uncertain, as does the eventual composition of any negotiating format. Moscow’s stated position nevertheless highlights Europe’s predicament: it wants influence over the eventual settlement but lacks an agreed and consistently functioning diplomatic channel to one of its principal participants.
Stubb and Støre appear to have recognised that difficulty. Their initiative was partly an effort to ensure that European security concerns would be conveyed directly rather than exclusively through Washington.
For Moscow, the disagreement among European capitals creates additional room for manoeuvre. Russian diplomats can deal with individual governments prepared to communicate while other European leaders continue debating whether such contact should occur at all.
For Europe, diplomatic unity becomes less useful when the price of preserving it is reduced participation in negotiations whose consequences its own countries will have to live with.
The October call has not transformed European relations with Russia. Sanctions remain, the war continues, and negotiations have yet to establish an agreed settlement. The Nordic leaders themselves have offered no indication that their political differences with Moscow have disappeared.
But geography is already imposing a more practical discipline on diplomacy.
Norway cannot manage the Barents Sea indefinitely without Russia. Finland cannot eliminate the security implications of sharing a long border with its eastern neighbour. And Europe cannot assume that a regional security settlement will be shaped entirely by governments unwilling to communicate directly with President Putin.
Moscow has gained something modest but politically significant: renewed contact initiated by states that remain among its firmest critics.
The more consequential development may lie on the European side. Finland and Norway have begun testing whether a policy built around pressure and deterrence can coexist with direct diplomacy.
For a continent that will continue sharing its geography with Russia whatever happens in Ukraine, that question should have been settled long before October 2026.
Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research
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