Do we like Alexander Stubb?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He has backed LGBTQ+ people and climate action on the record, and the record has no harm in it, but it is thin on personal kindness.
Alexander Stubb is Finland's president, and these days he's one of Europe's busiest faces on the world stage. He's often described as a leader who can actually get a conversation going with Donald Trump, and he joked about moving from golf diplomacy to sauna diplomacy. That's the gist, because honestly the reporting we could open was mostly about foreign policy, not his life story.
The big recent story is Russia. In May 2026 he told Italy's Corriere della Sera it was time for Europe to start direct talks with Moscow. A month later, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he said the EU should lead negotiations, then the UK, France and Germany if that fails. Whether that reads as hard-headed diplomacy or a worrying crack in unity depends on your view of how to end the war, and it's a policy debate, not a scandal.
On the harm check, this is where he shines. In June 2025 he and his spouse agreed to be patrons of Helsinki Pride, reportedly the first time a sitting president has done it, saying they stand on the side of equality and against discrimination. MPs from the Christian Democrats and the Finns Party said it was poor judgment and that a president should stay out of divisive issues. He didn't back down.
A year earlier he publicly criticised a Finns Party minister who kept Finland out of an international gender-equality alliance for rebuilding Ukraine. The minister's decision was reportedly because the alliance promotes the rights of gender and sexual minorities. Stubb said Finland's foreign policy rests on defending those minorities and hoped for no repeat. That's using a platform for other people, and it cost him some friction with the government's own partners.
Gaps, honestly: we found no court outcomes or credible allegations of mistreating people, and no harmful words or company. We also found little on charity or personal kind acts, and nothing on what he has said about trans people specifically. The Pride stand and the rebuke of the minister cover LGBTQ+ people broadly. We couldn't check a voting record, so we're judging his public acts and words.
So: a statesman with no sign of the grievance slide, a visible ally to LGBTQ+ Finns, and a Trump-handler who still says publicly that Trump should keep pressing Russia. Where you land on his Russia talk is your call, but on the question you're really asking, he's a safe one to like.