Russia-Ukraine war: Kyiv says Kissinger's proposal for peace talks is 'appeasing' Russia

Ukraine continues to push back against Russia as the war moves toward its 10th month. A Ukrainian presidential aide criticized the call by a former top US diplomat to negotiate with Russia for peace.

In a post on the Telegram messaging platform, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s aide Mykailo Podolyak criticized former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s call for Ukraine to start negotiations with Russia for peace.

This follows the opinion piece Kissinger wrote for The Spectator, where Kissinger – an architect of the Cold War policy to detente with the Soviet Union under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford – said that Russia made significant contributions to the world throughout history and must not be degraded.

The former top diplomat for the US proposed back in May that Ukraine should let Russia keep the Crimean peninsula it annexed back in 2014 and prior to the February 24 invasion, said Russia should withdraw to the front lines. Kissinger has also met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin several times.

“Mr. Kissinger has not understood anything…neither the nature of this war nor its impact on the world order,” wrote Podolyak. “The prescription that the ex-Secretary of State calls for, but is afraid to say out loud, is simple: appease the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine with guarantees of non-aggression against the other states of Eastern Europe.”

“All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious; any agreement with the devil – a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories – will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success with the autocrats of the world,” said Podolyak.

Ukraine has said that it does not believe Putin is serious about peace and that there will be no peace until every Russian soldier leaves Ukraine, including Crimea.

In May, Zelenskyy also shut down suggestions that Ukraine should cede the territories Russia claims to have annexed in order to reach a peace agreement, comparing the move to that of appeasing Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

During his nightly address, Zelenskyy said that those who suggest ceding territory have no regard for the interests of the Ukrainian people, especially those who reside in the territories that are proposed to be ceded to Russia.