Finland’s President Alexander Stubb has added his voice to the growing number of calls from EU members to reengage with Russia.

An ardent Ukraine-supported, he said the EU may soon need to reopen political dialogue with Russia. “I do think that we are approaching the moment when political conversational channels have to be open with Russia,” Stubb said speaking at a Chatham House event, but added that any move must be carefully managed. “But that has to be done in a very coordinated manner among European allies and friends, not as a solo act as we have seen with Prime Minister Fico of Slovakia or Prime Minister Orban of Hungary. So, it needs to be very much a unified approach.”

The President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, also said on March 18 that the 27 EU countries should be “ready” in case the dialogue to end the war, led by US President Donald Trump, does not yield the desired results.

He said the EU's main contribution for now is to “increase economic pressure on Russia” and continue supporting Ukraine by all available means. "But there may come a time when we will need to take over President Trump's efforts and make our own efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine," he added.

With Ukraine facing a growing financial crisis after the €90bn EU loan approved in December has been blocked by Hungary leaving Ukraine facing a macroeconomic collapse in the spring and running out of men, money and materiel, the pressure to end the war as soon as possible is growing.

A new problem is the war in Iran has distracted the White House and Ukraine's peace talks have fizzled out for the meantime, as US President Donald Trump loses his patience with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who is refusing to concede to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to cede territory. Trump needs a quick end to the war ahead of key midterm elections in November.

Stubb has added his voice to calls by French President Emmanuel Macron to reengage with Moscow in September.

“The time has come, the time is right, to work towards reducing the distrust between Russia and Europe, who ought to be partners on a strategic and economic level. Our divisions hurt our shared interests,” Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister said, adding it’s too early to talk about lifting EU sanctions against Moscow imposed over the Crimea.

Macron sent his top diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne to Moscow at the start of February in the first direct contact between the Kremlin and the Elysée Palace since the start of the war. He met with Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov, but the meeting ended without any results.

Macron’s call has since been echoed by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as a ceasefire deal is tantalisingly close, but remains elusive.

More recently, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever put the cat amongst the pigeons by calling for the EU to not only restart talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine but restarting the import of Russian gas.

“Since we are not capable of threatening Vladimir Putin by sending weapons to Ukraine, and we cannot choke him economically without the support of the US, there is only one method left: making a deal,” he told the Belgian newspaper L’Echo.

The statement was particularly controversial and comes on the heels of De Wever’s central role in blocking the EU effort to confiscate Russia’s frozen $300bn of assets in December and reassign them as a Reparation Loan for Ukraine.

That bailed out was replaced by a collective borrowing €90bn EU loan proposal, but that idea has become a fiasco after Hungary blocked it due to the Druzhba pipeline oil import row with Ukraine.

Stubb’s comments come as divisions within the EU over how to handle Moscow have become increasingly visible. An attempt to pass the latest twentieth sanctions package in time for the fourth anniversary of the start of the Ukraine war failed thanks to these rifts.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico have long since broken ranks with Brussels and always advocated for resuming economic ties with Moscow. Recently their camp was bolstered by the return to office of Andrej Babis as Prime Minister of Czechia, who is also pro-Russian.

The softening of the EU’s position is partly being driven by an expanding gas crisis, which will be made a lot worse by the outbreak of war in the Middle East; gas prices have already doubled just as Europe goes into the restocking summer season at a time when European gas tanks hold record low amounts of gas.

Putin has been capitalising on the energy crisis by turning the tables on Europe and proposing to ban the export of Russian gas to Europe, ahead of the EU’s plan to ban imports of Russian gas completely by the start of 2027

Stubb’s remarks reflect growing concern among European policymakers about the long-term consequences of isolating Russia diplomatically and the failure of extreme sanctions to put Russia under sufficient pressure to change its policies. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the sanctions are having a boomerang effect and are doing more harm to European economies than they are to Russia.

The Finnish president, whose country joined Nato in 2023 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, stressed that any reopening of dialogue should not undermine European unity or support for Kyiv. His emphasis on coordination highlights fears in Brussels that fragmented national initiatives could weaken the bloc’s collective leverage.

Stubb’s backtrack on the standard hardline suggests that debate is shifting towards how and when channels of communication might eventually be restored.