Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has warned that the only route to a durable peace in Ukraine is ensuring Russian President Vladimir Putin understands he cannot achieve his goals militarily, telling CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour that any settlement must include binding guarantees that Russia will not target Ukraine again.
"The key to bringing Russia to the negotiating table is for Putin to understand that he will not achieve his goals militarily," Mr. Mitsotakis said at a joint Economist and iefimerida.gr summit in Athens.
"We must return to a framework with tangible guarantees that Russia will not target Ukraine again."
Ms. Amanpour said Western support for Ukraine had faltered partly because of Kremlin nuclear posturing and warned that European defence frameworks could take a decade to fully mature. She pointed to structural cracks in Russia's wartime budget as reason for cautious optimism but acknowledged that reclaiming all lost territory may be beyond reach for Kyiv.
"We must bring Putin credibly to the negotiating table," she said.
Mr. Mitsotakis used the platform to outline Greece's positioning across several global fault lines. On energy, he said Greece is a logistics hub for routing U.S. liquefied natural gas into the Balkans — a role it has been building through the Vertical Corridor infrastructure running northward from Greek ports.
On maritime security, he defended Greece's naval participation in the EU's Operation Aspides to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, where the crisis has disrupted global energy flows for ten weeks.
On European industrial policy, Mr. Mitsotakis called for robust EU action against heavily subsidized Chinese overproduction.
"Nobody can compete with the Chinese on price," he said, urging swift implementation of economic reforms.
Mr. Mitsotakis also cited Greece's economic rehabilitation — restored sovereign credibility, investment-grade ratings and the recent exit from EU macroeconomic surveillance — as evidence that the country has shed its reputation as the "problem child" of the Eurozone and is now positioned as a model for post-crisis recovery.