Europe has broken its isolation of Russia after Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store spoke to Vladimir Putin by phone on October 27 about the war in Ukraine and planned talks in Abu Dhabi, TASS reported.

The two Nordic leaders initiated the call and took part on behalf of their own countries rather than for Europe as a whole, Stubb's office said.

The conversation was the second time there has been direct contact between EU leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin since war started, other than trips to Moscow by Putin allies, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

French President Emmanuel Macron made the first EU mainstream contact by sending his chief diplomatic adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, to Moscow on February 3, 2026, for discreet talks with Yuri Ushakov, President Vladimir Putin's senior foreign policy adviser, but he didn’t meet Putin himself and nothing came of the talks. Macron is the only other mainstream leader to have talked to Putin directly in a call in July last year. Macron subsequently acknowledged that Bonne's mission had failed to produce a breakthrough.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the conversation with the two Nordic leaders adn Putin, who discussed security in the Baltic Sea and the High North.

The call came as the EU continued to seek a role in peace negotiations led by Washington. Brussels had yet to name an envoy for talks with Moscow, and Czech President Petr Pavel was reportedly among the favourites for the job. Kremlin aide Ushakov said on October 27 that Europe's representative for the Ukraine negotiations had not yet been determined, Vedomosti reported.

Putin set out his assessment of the situation in the conflict zone and its "root causes", and said peace could be reached provided Russia's interests were "fully taken into account," according to the Kremlin readout. He said the "confrontational approach" of the EU and Nato was hindering progress.

Notably, the Kremlin agreed to take the call with “neighbourly countries” and not as representatives of the EU. With a new round of talks underway, brokered by the US, the Kremlin has been explicit that it refuses to talk to the EU as an institution and will only deal with EU members on a bilateral basis. Stubb explicitly said in a statement that talks were held on a “neighbourly” basis.

The conversation took into account Putin's recent talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg, as well as Stubb and Store's own contacts with Witkoff and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oslo meeting on October 20, the Kremlin said. All three leaders backed the agreement to resume trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US in Abu Dhabi, where the US has revived a Donbas trade-off.

Putin told the two leaders that a US-mediated humanitarian operation had begun near the town of Oleshky (Alyoshki in Russian) in the occupied part of Ukraine's Kherson region. The local ceasefire there will last until November 1, Vedomosti reported.

On the Baltic, Stubb and Store "confirmed the importance of respecting international maritime law and the principle of freedom of navigation", the Kremlin said. The leaders agreed to stay in direct telephone contact.

Stubb called the conversation "frank and substantive" and said ending the war requires continued direct dialogue with Russia. He said the call had been prepared jointly with Ukraine and the US, Vedomosti reported. Store stressed the importance of de-escalation, according to the Norwegian government.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the call had not been coordinated with European allies, while Ushakov said he was confident Finland and Norway would not be punished by their partners for talking to Putin.