Zelenskyy meets with Kissinger in US: he was against Ukraine in NATO, but changed his mind

Ukrainska Pravda
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During his visit to the United States, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Henry Kissinger, a diplomat, scholar and politician who was previously against Ukraine's membership in NATO and now supports Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance.

Source: Andrii Yermak, Head of the President's Office, on Telegram

Details: Yermak noted that he also took part in the meeting. He said that Kissinger has many apt quotes that characterise the current state of affairs in the war with Russia.

The head of the President’s Office added that Kissinger is now one of Ukraine's lobbyists in NATO.

Quote from Kissinger: "Before this war, I was opposed to the membership of Ukraine in NATO because I feared that it would start the very process that we are seeing now. Now that this process has reached this level, the idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions no longer makes sense."

Reference: Henry Kissinger was the US Secretary of State and national security adviser in the 1970s. With his participation, the Cold War between the United States and the USSR acquired a softening called "détente". He was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 in connection with the armistice in Vietnam.

Background:

  • In 2008, Kissinger opposed Ukraine's admission to NATO and advocated that Ukraine remain in an area "that Russians consider a space of their own identity". In 2015, he criticised sanctions against Russia and justified the occupation of Crimea.

  • In May 2022, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said that Ukraine should surrender part of its territory to Russia to end the war. Then Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to the former US Secretary of State, "It seems that Mr Kissinger's calendar is not 2022 but 1938, and he thought he was speaking to an audience not in Davos but in Munich at that time".

  • In July 2022, Henry Kissinger called for no concessions on the Ukrainian territories seized by Russia during possible future negotiations with Moscow, and in January 2023, he supported Ukraine's accession to NATO.

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