Former Munich Security Conference chairman suggests way to resolve Ukraine conflict — RT World News

Wolfgang Ischinger, the former president of the Munich Security Conference, argued that an international contact group should be created with a view to resolving the Ukrainian crisis, with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany constituting the nucleus. Now is the time to start a serious conversation about ways to secure peace, he wrote in an op-ed in German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel on Sunday.

Ischinger, who chaired the annual security convention from 2008 to 2022, felt that “it is high time we set in motion a peace process for Ukraine.“He recognized that critical voices in the West are asking questions that are not”completely unjustified,like how much longer governments plan to pump the Eastern European country with guns.

With this in mind, the veteran German diplomat called for the “immediate» Creation of a special contact group that would work alongside the existing group at Ramstein Air Base, which helps coordinate defense assistance to Ukraine.

Such a congregation of world powers, according to Ischinger, should be mandated to work out multiple scenarios and settlement options, as well as to prepare draft agreements so that, if and when Kyiv and Moscow decide to sit down at the table of negotiations, there are already foundations in place for a peace process.

Besides the four Western powers mentioned, the contact group envisioned by the German politician would also involve nations like Canada, Spain, Poland, Italy, the Baltic states, as well as the UN, EU, l OSCE and NATO. To make it more representative, invitations should also be extended to countries like Brazil, India and China, Ischinger added.

He said key issues on the group’s agenda would include conditions for a ceasefire, issues of sovereignty over Crimea and parts of Donbass, security guarantees for Ukraine and its possible NATO membership.

Moscow officials have repeatedly made it clear that they are open to principled negotiations with Kyiv, provided Ukraine accepts Russia’s terms and recognizes what the Kremlin calls the “reality on the ground.”

Addressing the Russian Federal Assembly late last month, President Vladimir Putin claimed that it was Ukraine and its Western donors who had “started the war.“Moscow, according to Putin,”used force to stop them.”

In January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signaled that Moscow was “ready to respond to all serious proposalsto resolve the conflict. However, he claimed that the West does not allow kyiv to make its own decisions.