The former US Secretary of State considers the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for the Russian president to be a mistake, writes La Razón, quoted by Rador.

Henry KissingerPhoto: John MacDougall / AFP / Profimedia Images

Veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger, who was former Republican President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state from 1973 to 1976, suggests in an interview that some responsibility for the war in Ukraine is shared.

“I don’t think it’s all Putin’s fault,” he told the German weekly Die Zeit. In 2014, an influential strategist expressed serious doubts about the plan to invite Ukraine to NATO, considering it a direct challenge to Russia.

Kissinger, who turns 100 on Saturday, May 27, believed at the time that “Ukraine should have remained neutral, with a status similar to Finland.” However, he now claims that he has changed his mind and is in favor of Ukraine joining the military alliance after the end of the war.

“Today I am absolutely in favor of Ukraine joining NATO. Now, when there are no more neutral zones between NATO and Russia, it is better for the West to accept Ukraine into NATO.”

“Put before the court? Better not!”

He also talked about the arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for consideration at the International Criminal Court. “Put before the court? It’s better not!”, he said. Because, in his opinion, “it is impossible or much more difficult to end the war if the outcome of the war is tied to the personal fate of the political leader.”

Regarding the possibility that Moscow would approve the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Kissinger expressed his doubts with some nuance: “The more you penetrate the essence of Russian identity, the more likely you are to do it.

In July 2022, Henry Kissinger advised Ukraine and the West not to cede any occupied territory after the start of the war in a possible scenario of negotiations with Russia. “The concession of Ukrainian territory should not be one of the conditions we can accept,” Kissinger said then.

Last month he called for a ceasefire that would require Russia to withdraw from the demarcation front before an invasion in February 2022, while Crimea would be subject to “negotiations”.

Read also:

  • Henry Kissinger supports Ukraine’s accession to NATO
  • Henry Kissinger: The time has come to negotiate peace in Ukraine / What a famous diplomat says about “dreams of dismemberment of Russia”
  • Henry Kissinger, a 180-degree turn in the war in Ukraine: Kyiv must not cede any territory
  • Henry Kissinger asks President Joe Biden not to destroy his life’s work / Clarifications and statements regarding the war in Ukraine
  • President Volodymyr Zelensky attacked former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
  • Kissinger believes that we have a global shortage of leaders

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