Photo: Finnish Government / Santeri Iltanen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Russia has reportedly demanded that Finland leave NATO — along with a ban on alliance bases in the Baltic states and control of the entire Donbas region — as part of a sweeping set of conditions for ending its war in Ukraine, according to a report in the German newspaper Bild. The Kremlin denied making the demand, and Finland rejected it outright.
Bild reported on Friday, citing its own sources, that Russian representatives put forward the conditions during talks in Abu Dhabi and presented them to European officials. The demands go far beyond the territory of Ukraine itself and aim at what Moscow calls a “new European security order.”
What Russia Is Reported to Have Demanded
According to the report, Moscow is proposing to keep all Ukrainian territory it currently occupies and to take control of the entire Donbas, including the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions still held by Kyiv. Ukraine would be required to adopt non-aligned status and abandon its bid to join NATO, although its path to European Union membership would not be challenged.
The reported conditions also include the demilitarization of the Black Sea ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv, agreements guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the Black and Baltic seas, and a ban on NATO military bases in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Finland, which joined the alliance in 2023, would have to leave it and return to its earlier neutral status.
Russia is also said to be demanding that Moldova be transformed into a federal republic, with its breakaway region of Transnistria and the autonomous region of Gagauzia granted the right to hold independence referendums if Moldova joins the European Union.
In return, Moscow is reportedly offering to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Belarus, to refrain from deploying intermediate-range missiles there, and to pull its troops out of Moldova’s Transnistria region.
Bild stressed that the proposal is only one of several being discussed in unofficial negotiating circles, with several groups of intermediaries operating in parallel and competing with one another. It remains unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has endorsed this particular plan.
Finland: “In No Way Open to Negotiation”
Helsinki moved quickly to reject the idea. Finnish Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen told Finnish media, including the public broadcaster Yle, that Finland’s NATO membership is “in no way open to negotiation” and that Russia knows this, calling it outrageous that such a demand was even proposed.
Häkkänen said Moscow has pressed similar claims for years, including in 2021, and argued that the Kremlin tests Western concessions step by step, going as far as Western leniency allows. He said Russia raises demands before any talks and then offers concessions that are not really concessions, so that its original goals become easier to reach.
Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said Russia’s negative views on Finland’s membership came as no surprise, while stressing that the decision belongs to Finland and the alliance. She argued that Moscow’s push to extend the talks beyond Ukraine to the whole European security architecture suggests it is in no hurry for a peace deal, and urged Russia to accept a ceasefire, noting that Ukraine has been ready for one since negotiations began.
Finland formally joined NATO on 4 April 2023, a step taken after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, so that it would not share Ukraine’s fate. Reversing that membership would require a decision by Finland itself under its own constitutional procedures, and no agreement between Russia, Ukraine and the United States could end it without Helsinki’s consent.
Kremlin Denies the Demand
The Kremlin denied the report on Friday. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had not demanded Finland’s withdrawal from NATO and that the subject had not been discussed, according to the Interfax news agency.
The denial leaves the status of the reported demands disputed: a proposal described by Bild as circulating in informal contacts, rejected by Helsinki, and disowned by Moscow — but one that, if it reflects real Russian thinking, would sharply widen the scope of any settlement.
A Wider Fight Over Europe’s Security
The reported demands surfaced after two days of talks in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November, involving representatives of Ukraine, the United States, Europe and Russia. The main outcome was an agreement in principle on a large-scale prisoner exchange, potentially involving 1,000 prisoners from each side, with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner then briefing Putin in Moscow and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin. Kushner described the Moscow talks as “substantive” and said the final terms of the prisoner exchange had been agreed.
Zelenskyy said the week’s diplomacy had produced three results: preparations for the largest prisoner exchange since the start of the war, Europe’s involvement in the negotiations as an equal participant, and arrangements for further multilateral meetings, with the next round possibly held in the United Arab Emirates or Switzerland. Speaking in Dublin, he questioned why US–Russian discussions about Ukraine appeared to be expanding into a broader settlement on European security.
European leaders share that concern. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned President Donald Trump this week not to spring any surprises in his expected talks with Putin, saying he feared a repeat of the Alaska summit that European leaders viewed as a pivotal moment in efforts to end the war. The reported Russian demands suggest those fears were well placed — and that the hardest arguments in the peace process may now be about the security of Europe as a whole, not just the future of Ukraine.
Sources: Interfax-Ukraine; Pollar (citing Yle)