For ninety minutes on a line from Helsinki, two of Russia's smallest European neighbours did something most Western capitals have avoided for years: they spoke directly to Vladimir Putin. Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said their aim was to deliver messages in person about future peace negotiations. "Peace will not be reached through silence," Stubb argued, a pointed rebuttal to the policy of isolation that has dominated Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Few observers will conclude that the call changed much.

Stubb described the exchange as frank and substantive, but Støre conceded that views remained far apart. The Kremlin's account was blunter. Mr Putin said a lasting settlement was possible only if Russia's "legal interests" were taken into account "fully and unconditionally", and he repeated his familiar claim about the "root causes" of the war, which critics read as a denial of Ukraine's right to exist as a sovereign state. The significance therefore lies less in content than in choreography.

Both leaders stressed that they spoke as Russia's neighbours, not as representatives of Europe, a careful framing that may protect them from accusations of freelancing. The call was prepared with Ukraine and the United States after a meeting in Oslo with Volodymyr Zelensky and the American envoy Steve Witkoff, and Mr Zelensky was debriefed afterwards. Kyiv's foreign minister called the approach "right". The timing matters too.