00:00The leaders of Finland and Norway held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday
00:06in a rare instance of direct contact between Moscow and Western leaders.
00:11Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jornaskar Storer
00:15urged Putin for meaningful negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
00:23Russia, on the other hand, downplays the significance of the 90-minute phone call,
00:28saying it offered nothing new on the conflict
00:30and that European countries were simply seeking a role in the negotiation process.
00:34Putin added that the confrontational policy of EU and NATO countries is dragging out hostilities in Ukraine.
00:41Both Nordic leaders also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the call with Kremlin.
00:47Kiev's Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiha had asked the leaders to convey to Putin
00:51the necessity of a ceasefire and a Ukraine-Russia summit.
00:55Ukraine wants to end this war.
00:58We have doable proposals.
01:01We need to get new dynamics in our peace efforts to speed up them,
01:08to find even a new momentum, how to get this new energy in our peace efforts.
01:15The phone call with Zelenskyy took place just hours after a localized ceasefire
01:20kicked in the Ukrainian city of Oleskyy to allow for humanitarian aid to enter.
01:25Sibiha said the efforts in Oleskyy could pave the way for further steps in the peace process.
