Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser, said he believes the Russia-Ukraine war is coming to a turning point and expects negotiations by the end of the year thanks to recent efforts made by China.
After several rounds of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in the early months of the conflict launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, neither side has seemed willing to return to the negotiating table.
Beijing seemingly tried to reignite talks between Kyiv and Moscow with a 12-point position paper published on the one-year anniversary of the invasion. Along with calling for a ceasefire, the Chinese plan would leave Russian troops in occupied territories of Ukraine and put an end to any sanctions not approved by the U.N. Security Council, of which Russia is a veto-wielding member.
In an interview with CBS News' Ted Koppel that aired on Sunday, Kissinger sounded confident that China would help change the tide of the ongoing war.
"Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head, I think, by the end of the year," he said. "We will be talking about negotiating processes and even actual negotiations."
Kissinger also told Koppel that he believes both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin would speak with him if he telephoned them.
When asked by Koppel if he would meet with Putin in Moscow if asked to do so by a president, the retired diplomat said: "I would be inclined to do it, yes. But I would be an adviser, not an active person."
Newsweek reached out via email to representatives for Kissinger.
Despite the release of the 12-point peace plan, Xi has faced criticism from the international community for not speaking out more about Putin's invasion. Throughout the war, he and other Beijing officials have firmly maintained that China is neutral and wishes only for peace.
At the same time, though, Chinese and Russian officials have spoken publicly about the close ties between their countries, and Xi traveled to Moscow in March to visit with Putin. Prior to Xi's arrival, Putin wrote an article for China's People Daily in which he said relations between Russia and China were "without limitations or taboos."
"China is not interested in Ukraine winning the war and returning all its occupied territories. Victory for Ukraine would mean for China victory for democracy and the defeat of its strategic partner without limits. China will do everything to prevent it from happening," Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, told Newsweek after Xi's visit to Moscow.
However, Xi engaged later in a one-hour phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in April.
"Amid the current rise of reasonable thinking and voices from all sides, we should seize the opportunity to build up favorable conditions for a political settlement of the crisis," Xi told Zelensky, according to an official summary from China.
On Twitter, Zelensky said that he and Xi "had a long and meaningful conversation."
He added that "this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine's ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations."
Though Putin and Kremlin officials have said they are open to discussing peal with Ukraine, their conditions for such talks suggest a ceasefire is far off. Likewise, Ukraine indicated that it cannot negotiate with Putin due to the International Criminal Court's warrant for his arrest over the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted after the warrant was issued in March that identifying Putin as "an obvious international criminal directly means there will be no negotiations with the current Russian elite."
