Europe needs special Ukraine envoy to get meaningful peace role, Finland says after US rebuff

By John Irish and Charlotte Van Campenhout

MUNICH (Reuters) - Europe needs a special envoy for Ukraine to ensure it gets a meaningful role in any peace process, two European leaders said on Sunday after the continent was ruled out as a partner in talks by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

Europe will not have a seat at the table for Ukraine peace talks, Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said on Saturday after Washington sent a questionnaire to European capitals to ask what they could contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv.

In response, French President Emmanuel Macron is likely to host on Monday an emergency gathering of European leaders, including Britain. It would aim to see what immediate help they can give Ukraine, what concrete role Europe can play in providing security guarantees for Kyiv as well as how to strengthen Europe’s collective security.

But dozens of similar summits have shown Europe to be dithering, at times disunited and politically weak and scrambling to come up with a cohesive plan to end the Ukraine war and dealing with Russia.

"If I may just throw out one idea loosely, if there is a negotiating table, I think we need to do something similar that was done in Kosovo," Finnish President Alexander Stubb said at the annual Munich Security Conference, referring to diplomacy that helped end Serbia's 1998-99 military crackdown on its restive southern province and bring about Kosovan statehood.

"Europe needs to have a special envoy like Martti Ahtisaari (on Kosovo), and then a deputy envoy who is on the level of ... Kellogg..., and in that sense, we get some kind of a skin in the game."

Trump shocked European allies this week by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin - whose forces began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago - without consulting them or Kyiv and declaring an immediate start to peace talks.

His administration also left them dismayed after blunt comments on its approach to the nearly three-year Ukraine-Russia war and U.S. Vice President JD Vance launched a scathing attack in Munich on Europe's democracies and values.

"What we lacked on Ukraine in recent years was one personality highly respected by everyone, taken into account in Moscow, taken into account in Kyiv, and having support in Washington and European capitals and other leaders, including the global South, that could have the authority to manage the peace talks," Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.

"We need the high visibility of someone strong, who can manage the process."

(Additional reporting by Lili Bayer; editing by Mark Heinrich)