As our empty plates are taken away I ask: how will this all end?
“After the [US] election there will be a kind of new momentum, a new initiative to try to get some movement. But I don’t think that will be to throw in the towel and to give up,” he says. “It may include ways to try to get movement on the battlefield combined with movement around the negotiating table.”
“Ukraine still has to decide [when to negotiate]. But we need to make the conditions that make it possible for them to sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable . . . something where they survive as an independent nation.”
I ask what he would propose to Zelenskyy. He demurs, then suggests a historical comparison. “Finland fought a brave war against the Soviet Union in ’39. They imposed much bigger costs on the Red Army than expected,” he says. “The war ended with them giving up 10 per cent of the territory. But they got a secure border.”But that came with Finnish neutrality, until it joined Nato last year. Ukraine wants immediate Nato membership, anathema to Putin.
The US and Germany have led opposition to granting war-torn Ukraine membership, arguing that its Article 5 mutual defence clause would mean instant war with Russia. “There are ways of solving that,” Stoltenberg says. “If there is a line that is not necessarily the internationally recognised border.”
“Again, it is always very dangerous to compare because no parallels are 100 per cent correct, but the United States has security guarantees to Japan. But they don’t cover the Kuril [Islands], which Japan regards as Japanese territory, controlled by Russia,” he says.He proposes another comparison: “West Germany regarded East Germany as part of the bigger Germany. They didn’t have an embassy in East Berlin. But Nato was of course only protecting West Germany.”
src: click (FT talking to Stoltenberg)
