The time for negotiated peace in Ukraine is near to reduce the risk of another devastating world war, while dreams of dismembering Russia could trigger nuclear chaos, veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger said, Reuters reports.

Kissinger, the architect of Cold War detente as secretary of state under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has met with Vladimir Putin several times since he became president in 2000.

His statements were made in a context where there is no end in sight to the conflict provoked by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. At least tens of thousands of people died and millions were forced to flee their homes. Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine.

The Kremlin claims that Kyiv should recognize Moscow’s annexation of the southern and eastern regions. Ukraine says all Russian soldiers must leave its territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Kyiv applied to join NATO after Moscow announced its annexations in September.

Kissinger: “How to avoid a new world war”

“The time is at hand to take advantage of the strategic changes that have already been made and integrate them into a new framework for achieving a negotiated peace,” Kissinger wrote in The Spectator magazine.

“The peace process should connect Ukraine with NATO, no matter how this connection is formulated. The alternative to neutrality no longer makes sense,” Kissinger says in an article titled “How to Avoid a New World War.”

Kissinger said he had proposed a cease-fire deal in May that would have required Russia to withdraw by February 24, and that Crimea would be subject to “negotiations.”

CIA Director William Burns said in an interview published Saturday that while most conflicts end in negotiations, the CIA’s assessment is that Russia has so far not been serious about genuine negotiations to end the war.

What a famous diplomat says about “dreams of the dismemberment of Russia”

Kissinger, now 99, suggested that if a return to the status quo established in 2014 proved impossible, internationally supervised referendums in territories claimed by Russia could be an option.

Kissinger warned that the desire to make Russia “powerless” or even an attempt to dissolve Russia could provoke chaos. Neither Ukraine nor any Western state is in favor of this, Reuters notes.

“The collapse of Russia or the destruction of its strategic capabilities could turn its territory, spanning 11 time zones, into a space of conflict,” Kissinger said.

“Competitive (internal) forces may choose to resolve their disputes through violence. Other countries may try to expand their demands by force. All these dangers will be exacerbated by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons, which make Russia one of the two largest nuclear powers in the world,” he added.

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