Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Wednesday, May 20th, and this is your FT News briefing.

Europe wants to start its own negotiations with Vladimir Putin, and protests over fuel prices

are erupting across Africa.

Plus, Friday is Jerome Powell's last day as chair of the Federal Reserve.

We'll take a look back at his term.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

U.S.-led talks on ending the war in Ukraine have stalled out in recent months, and this is prompting European leaders to think about creating their own special envoy to

negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Washington and Kiev have both expressed

support for Europe to engage with Russia in parallel to the U.S.-led peace talks,

and Russia appears to be open to the idea. So what happens next? Henry Foy has been reporting on

this development, and he joins me now. Hi, Henry. Hey, Mark. So what's the motive for this move,

and why now? The motive is really twofold. The first is that, as you said, the US-led push for peace talks in Ukraine has really stalled.

The Iran war is now distracting U.S. diplomats and the sort of U.S. political machine

and the kind of stalemate on the front lines in Ukraine and the fact that both sides

have dug in on their demands

means there's no real movement on that track. And then secondly, the Europeans are becoming

increasingly nervous that if they're not involved in this conversation, they're going to be

forced to accept some kind of a deal that they don't have any say in and may well not like.

So that's prompting these discussions that have sort of bubbled around for a while,

but now of very much mainstream. And there's a certain amount of momentum here in sending out

the frameworks for what those talks could look like, what the Europeans would want to say. And,

...