Henry Kissinger warns against escalating Russia-Ukraine conflict, urges peace talks

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Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said this week that negotiations must get underway soon to end Russia's Ukraine war, in order to avoid "a war against Russia itself."

"In my view, a movement towards negotiations on peace needs to begin in the next two months or so. The outcome of the war should be outlined by them before it creates upheavals and tensions that will be even harder to overcome, particularly between the eventual relationship of Russia towards Europe and of Ukraine towards Europe," Kissinger, 98, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,

"Ideally, the dividing line should return to the status quo ante. I believe pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine, which has been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but into a war against Russia itself, and so this seems to me to be the dividing line, that it is just impossible to define... It will be difficult."

NATO and its allies have struggled to put forward a cohesive or unified front, with nations such as Italy and Hungary failing to crack down on Russian imports or separate themselves from Russian energy.

NAVALNY: RUSSIA'S UKRAINE INVASION IS PUTIN'S ‘STUPID WAR'

Ukrainian soldiers recover the remains of four civilians killed inside a charred vehicle in Bucha, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

The U.S. has dumped tens of billions of dollars into the war effort, though the nation has stopped short of actual military intervention against the invading Russian forces.

Kissinger went on: "European relations are not the only key element of this long-term [evolution]. Russia and China and the United States will over the next years have to come to some definition of how to conduct the long-term relationship of countries. That depends on their strategic capacities but also on their interpretations of these capacities."

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Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, are currently in Ukraine, where they visited the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, the first American lawmakers to do so since it reopened last week.

Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

The embassy had shuttered its doors and relocated operations in the days prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. 

"The flag is flying once again, and it was very special for me because that’s where I worked when I was in Kyiv," Fitzpatrick said in a phone interview with Fox News Digital.  

The two House members arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday morning as part of a multi-day trip. The congressmen plan to meet with members of the Ukrainian parliament, and will be discussing the $40 billion aid package and what Ukrainian officials can expect from it.

Fox News' Ronn Blitzer and Greg Norman contributed to this report.