Veteran U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger said the time is approaching for a negotiated peace in Ukraine to reduce the risk of another devastating world war, but the Kyiv government dismissed his comments as amounting to "appeasing the aggressor" and said there could be no deal involving ceding territory.
Kissinger, 99, and an architect of the Cold War policy of detente towards the Soviet Union as secretary of state under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has met Russia's Vladimir Putin multiple times since he first became president in 2000.
There is no end in sight to the conflict sparked by Putin's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes. Russia now controls around a fifth of Ukraine.
The Kremlin says Kyiv must acknowledge Moscow's annexation of southern and eastern regions. Ukraine says every Russian soldier must leave its territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Kyiv applied to join NATO after Moscow announced the later annexations in September.
"The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation," Kissinger wrote in The Spectator magazine.
