Europe will be consulted – but ultimately excluded – from the planned peace talks between Russia, the US and Ukraine, Donald Trump’s special envoy has said.
Asked if Europe would be present at the planned talks, Keith Kellogg said he was from “the school of realism, and that is not going to happen”.
“It may be like chalk on the blackboard, it may grate a little bit, but I am telling you something that is really quite honest,” he said on Saturday.
“And to my European friends, I would say: get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defence] spending.”
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Mr Kellogg’s remarks will cause consternation among some European leaders who do not trust Mr Trump and believe their countries’ security is inextricably interwoven with the fate of Ukraine.
The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had invited European leaders to Paris on Sunday to discuss the situation.
Mr Kellogg said one reason previous peace talks between Ukraine and Russia had failed was because of the involvement of too many countries that had no ability to execute any such process.
“We are not going to get down that path,” he said on the margins of the Munich Security Conference.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had earlier used his speech to the conference to warn that Europe was likely to be excluded from the negotiations.
He urged Europe to step up and form a European army in which Ukraine would play a central role.
European leaders, battered by a confrontational speech by US vice-president JD Vance on Friday, are increasingly apprehensive about Mr Trump’s approach to a Ukraine peace deal and fear an agreement may be struck that is advantageous to the US, but has long-term implications not just for the security of Ukraine, but for Europe.
The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on social media: “Europe urgently needs its own plan of action concerning Ukraine and our security, or else other global players will decide about our future. Not necessarily in line with our own interest … This plan must be prepared now. There’s no time to lose.”
Mr Kellogg said the critical issues were to ensure the war did not start again after a ceasefire and to determine how Ukraine retained its sovereignty.
He said this would require a credible security guarantee, adding that Mr Trump, as the sole decision-maker in the US, was not yet in a position to define such a guarantee.
He said Mr Trump “would need a full range of options” and that “all options are on the table”. He said he was working on “Trump time”, adding that he expected an agreement in weeks and months. A key issue was to agree how breaches of any ceasefire agreement were handled, he said.
Mr Kellogg said he was working with his contacts in the Nato alliance while Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy, was in contact with the Russians. - Guardian
