- Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen opposes imposing neutrality on Ukraine
- Valtonen questions Russia’s trustworthiness in adhering to agreements
- Forcing Ukraine to accept terms could undermine international system, Valtonen says
Forcing neutrality onto Ukraine will not bring about a peaceful solution to the crisis with Russia, Finland’s foreign minister said on Monday, adding that Moscow could not be trusted to adhere to any agreement it signs.
[…]
With the prospect of U.S. president elect Donald Trump seeking to end the conflict as quickly possible and concerns from some allies that the terms could be imposed in Kyiv, one scenario could be to force a neutral status on Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly demanded Ukraine remain neutral for there to be peace, which would de facto kill its aspirations for NATO membership.
Russia trust issues
[…] Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen poured cold water on using the “Finlandisation” model, pointing out that firstly Helsinki had fended off Russia in World War 2 and that despite the ensuing peace had always continued to arm itself fearing a new conflict.
“I’m against it (Finlandisation), yes. Let’s face it, Ukraine was neutral before they were attacked by Russia,” Valtonen, whose country has a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, said on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Forum.
[…]
The Ukraine invasion led both Finland and Sweden to abandon decades of military non-alignment and seek safety in the NATO camp.
Valtonen questioned whether Russia could be trusted even if it agreed a deal and said forcing Ukraine’s hand to accept terms against its will would tear down the international system.
“I really want to avoid a situation where any European country, or the United States for that matter, starts negotiating over the heads of Ukraine,” she said.
“A larger power can not just grab territory, but also essentially weaken the sovereignty of another nation,” she said.
…which is why we urgently need to dump the general rule of “frozen conflicts prevent accession into NATO” and change them into tailormade agreements. Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine: so far, Russia has an incentive for frozen conflicts to steer these countries on the course it wants. We should no longer allow this.
The EU accepts countries with border disputes into the union (in fact there’s a couple very fun ones between member states, generally low-intensity though, e.g NL and DE even agreed to disagree in perpetuity), the EU is also a defensive pact, trouble being getting into the EU is quite a bit harder than getting into NATO: Vastly stricter rule of law and democracy standards, on top of that trade integration, economics and everything.
OTOH the EU is also not above creating new ad-hoc treaty structures with unimaginative names so a… DCENSV, “Deep and Comprehensive European Neighbourhood Security Vehicle” is absolutely within the realm of possibilities. People are basically waiting for Trump to move while preparing responses for every scenario, very little if any of this kind of preparation will reach the public eye.
I mean… North Macedonia joined NATO in 1995.