The President of Finland announced his readiness for negotiations with Putin

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö is “absolutely ready” to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin if it would be useful. About it declared Finnish leader in an interview with Bloomberg.

“I said that I was absolutely ready to talk to him if there was any benefit from it, but at the moment we have not found anything like that,” he said.

Previously heads of state carried out telephone conversations in May 2022. Then Niinistö said that the country intends to apply for NATO membership in the coming days. Then the office of the President of Finland noted that “the conversation was straightforward and conducted without aggravation”, the parties tried to “avoid tension.”

Finland applied for NATO membership on May 18, 2022, and Sweden did so at the same time. At the moment, only two countries of the NATO bloc – Hungary and Turkey – have not ratified the protocols on the accession of states to the alliance. According to the signed agreements, Stockholm and Helsinki promised Ankara to investigate and stop any funding and recruitment activities of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), recognized as terrorist in Turkey. In addition, Sweden and Finland pledged to consider Turkey’s requests for the extradition of suspected terrorists, while Stockholm separately announced the tightening of anti-terrorism legislation in the country.

1 March Finnish Parliament 184 votes out of 200 supported country’s entry into NATO. The vote in parliament was held early to close the issue before the elections, which will be held on April 2. After the approval of the deputies, the bill went to Finnish President Sauli Niinistö for signature for approval.