Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky condemns former US Secretary of State for comments on giving up the Donbas region to Russia. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recommended focusing on establishing borders along the “line of contact” as it existed on the eve of the Russian invasion.
In a video message Wednesday, Zelensky said, “No matter what the Russian state does, there is someone who says: ‘let’s take into account its interests.’ This year in Davos, it was heard again. Despite thousands of Russian missiles hitting Ukraine. Despite tens of thousands of Ukrainians being killed. Despite Bucha and Mariupol, etc. Despite the destroyed cities. And despite the ‘filtration camps’ built by the Russian state, in which they kill, torture, rape and humiliate like on a conveyor belt.
“Russia has done all this in Europe. But still, in Davos, for example, Mr. Kissinger emerges from the deep past and says that a piece of Ukraine should be given to Russia.”
In his remarks, Kissinger said of the conflict that: “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante,” apparently suggesting that Ukraine agree to give up much of the Donbas and Crimea.
“Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,” Kissinger said.
“It seems that Mr. Kissinger’s calendar is not 2022 but 1938, and he thought he was talking to an audience not in Davos but in what was then Munich,” he said. “By the way, in the real year 1938, when Mr. Kissinger’s family was fleeing Nazi Germany, he was 15 years old.”