President Alexander Stubb is partially correct, as paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal:
China holds the key to ending the war in Ukraine, urging Beijing to use its sway over Moscow while also calling on the US to lower growing tensions with China.
Stubb is correct to the extent that the People’s Republic of China is a key player in Russia’s war of destruction against Ukraine, but it’s not the key player. On the other hand, US-PRC tensions are irrelevant to the barbarian’s war except to the extent PRC President Xi Jinping chooses to use the war to poke a PRC stick in our eye.
Stubb’s soft-pedaling also comes from a basic misunderstanding of the situation vis-à-vis the barbarian’s invasion, which is done with a view to erasing Ukraine as a sovereign entity and absorbing it into the fabric of Russia. Here he is, exposing the depth of that misunderstanding:
President Xi Jinping holds the keys to a peaceful solution to this conflict because he’s in such a position of power. We in the West, not even the United States, cannot do that. All we can do is to provide arms to Ukraine to make sure it doesn’t lose its war.
There can be no peaceful solution with a barbarian that deliberately butchers women and children, bombs hospitals and schools, destroys power distribution nodes with a view to freezing Ukrainians in winter, and rapes women and children in barbarian occupied cities.
It’s utterly immoral to the point of outright evil, too, for the US and Europe to limit themselves to provid[ing] arms to Ukraine to make sure it doesn’t lose its war. That just keeps Ukrainian soldiers dying or being maimed while fighting to not lose. That just keeps Ukrainian women and children exposed to and dying from continued Russian atrocities. That just keeps the dwindling populations in barbarian occupied cities exposed to privation and continued atrocities. Fighting to not lose only increases Ukrainian losses.
It’s necessary that Ukraine win its war for survival outright, and that requires—demands—that the US and Europe stop supplying only enough arms for Ukraine to “not lose.” It requires—demands—that the US and Europe supply Ukraine, promptly and in numbers, with the weapons it needs to win its war for survival.
Another Stubb misunderstanding: Ukraine has been crystalline in its terms for ending the war: the barbarian’s withdrawal from all of occupied Ukraine. The PRC’s true key role is this: stop supplying Russia with arms, ammunition, technology, and money. Buy its oil and natural gas from sources other than Russia. Anything less is a dilution of its role to the point of meaningless virtue signaling. And poking with a stick.