The Kremlin call: How talking to Putin exposed Europe’s deepest rift over Ukraine

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Beneath the chandeliers and oil paintings of his Presidential Palace, Finland’s president Alexander Stubb sat down next to his old friend Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian prime minister, to call Vladimir Putin. They hoped such a dramatic and direct intervention with Russia’s leader would demonstrate European resolve. Instead, the conversation on a damp autumn morning in Helsinki triggered the biggest rift among Nordic allies since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and exposed Europe’s wider divisions over how to deal with Moscow at a pivotal moment in the push for peace. As Russian and Ukrainian negotiators prepare for talks with Donald Trump’s envoys in Abu Dhabi this week, the fallout from the call is still reverberating across Europe.