Russia is reported to have put Finland's withdrawal from NATO on the table in the diplomacy around the Ukraine war, according to a list of proposals obtained by the German newspaper Bild and published on Friday — a demand Finland's defence minister dismissed as 'absolutely outrageous' and which the Kremlin then denied ever making.

Source: bne IntelliNews via Interfax-Ukraine, Nov 13, 2026

Bild reported that Russian representatives presented the conditions to European officials during the talks held in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11, where Russian and Ukrainian delegations met under American mediation for the first direct negotiations in nine months. The paper described the package as a bid for a 'new European security order' reaching far beyond Ukraine itself.

Source: bne IntelliNews via Interfax-Ukraine, Nov 13, 2026

What the reported list contains

According to Bild, Moscow would keep all the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies and take the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — the Donbas — still under Kyiv's control. Ukraine would adopt a non-aligned status and drop its bid to join NATO, although its accession to the European Union would not be challenged.

The list then moves outside Ukraine: Finland would withdraw from NATO, reversing the 2023 enlargement that ended decades of Finnish military non-alignment, and NATO would be barred from setting up military bases in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv would be demilitarised, with agreements guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and the Baltic. Moldova would become a federal republic, with Transnistria and Gagauzia given the right to hold independence referendums if the country joins the EU.

Source: bne IntelliNews via Interfax-Ukraine, Nov 13, 2026

In return, Bild reported, Russia would withdraw its nuclear weapons from Belarus, refrain from deploying intermediate-range missiles there and pull Russian troops out of Transnistria. The newspaper stressed that this is only one of several proposals circulating in unofficial negotiating circles, where competing groups of intermediaries are working in parallel — and that it is not clear whether President Vladimir Putin has endorsed this particular plan.

Source: bne IntelliNews via Interfax-Ukraine, Nov 13, 2026

Finland: 'In no way a matter for negotiation'

Finland's defence minister Antti Häkkänen rejected the reported demand outright in Helsinki on Friday. 'Such matters are in no way a matter for negotiation,' he said, according to the Finnish broadcaster Yle. 'Russia knows that. It is absolutely outrageous to even suggest such a thing.' Häkkänen argued Europe should instead double down on support for Ukraine, warning: 'The softer the West is towards Russia's military ambitions, the more Russia will test further and further.'

Source: Rapporteur citing Yle, Nov 13, 2026

The Kremlin denies the Finland demand was made

The Kremlin subsequently denied making such a demand: spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no demand for Finland's withdrawal from NATO had been made and the subject had not been discussed, Interfax reported. The account also sits awkwardly with Moscow's own delegation — Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian side in Abu Dhabi, has said the Russian side held no talks with European representatives there, while calling for a sweeping overhaul of Europe's security arrangements on the grounds that they ignore Russia's interests.

Source: Interfax via Diplomacy and Law, Nov 13, 2026

The reported list revives the wider Russian push to rewrite Europe's security architecture that this site covered earlier in the talks. Read the earlier report

What happens next: the Abu Dhabi round produced agreement on a large prisoner exchange, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have since met Putin in Moscow and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin, and European governments — who on Friday settled on a joint E5-plus-EU team to speak for Europe in the talks — are pressing for a seat at the table before any security-order questions are decided. A further round is expected in the United Arab Emirates or Switzerland, and Helsinki's message is that Finland's place in NATO will not be part of it.