Europe live: US treasury secretary indicates growing frustration with Putin over Ukraine | World news

Meanwhile Finland’s influential president Alexander Stubb has been speaking to reporters in Helsinki in the last half hour, alongside his Lithuanian counterpart, Gitanas Nausėda.

Stubb, who is one of the European leaders with best working relationship with US president Trump, warned about the on-going risks associated with the geopolitical situation in Europe.

“Our shared assessment is that the security situation in Europe will remain challenging and unpredictable for a long term. In these turbulent times, it’s important that you have close allies like Lithuania and Finland. We need a credible collective defence for the eastern flank of Europe,” he said.

Discussing the lack of progress on Ukraine, he said he wasn’t “very optimistic that we will achieve a ceasefire or a framework for the peace negotiations in the near future” as Putin keeps stalling any discussions.

He said that Europe should “obviously continue our dialogue and engagement” with US president Donald Trump, “who is very much in the driver’s seat,” but acknowledge that Putin was “testing everyone’s patience.”

Separately asked about the on-going discussions on security guarantees, Stubb – who was part of the European delegation to see Trump in Washington – replied:

“We need to coordinate the security arrangements with the United States, which essentially will provide the backstop for this. This is what we’re focusing on right now.

We’re focusing on these issues with our Chiefs of Defence, which are drawing the concrete plans of what this type of an operation might look like, and I stress, post peace agreement.

And then we are also discussing this on a political level, for instance, on Thursday. So we’re making progress on this, and hopefully we’ll get a solution soon.”

Stubb also warned that the China summit with Russia and India reminded everyone about “the on-going competition [about forming] the new world order.”

He said:

“What we saw with the Shanghai Cooperation Group is what we have been seeing in the sidelines for a longer time, there’s an attempt to undermine the unity of the global West.

And my message, not only to my European colleagues, but especially to the United States, is that if we don’t drive a more cooperative or dignified foreign policy with especially the global South, the likes of India, we’re going to lose this game.”

In his comments, Lithuania’s Nausėda spoke about the need to fast-track the adoption of the 19th package of EU sanctions on Ukraine, and to press ahead with Ukraine’s accession to the EU by 2030.

But he also said that the apparent diplomatic backing Russia is getting form China and India “means probably it will be even more complicated to find the solutions between the United States and Russia and Ukraine.”

Nausėda insisted that “Russia’s behaviour is based on the assumption that they don’t want any peace, and [so] the peace could be achieved only through strength, through very strong measures the international society should apply.”