The prospects of a negotiated end to the Ukraine war are growing so dim that even the grand master of nuanced diplomacy, Henry Kissinger, is now supporting the ultimate affront to Russia: the idea of allowing Kyiv to join NATO.  

The Kremlin has long said the addition of its former Soviet Union satraps to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would be considered an act of war. Even the prospect of Ukraine joining the alliance became one of the excuses for President Putin to invade the country in February. 

The Kremlin’s ever-escalating rhetoric sounded unhinged Wednesday when the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that Ukraine’s Western supporters are out to get Russia the same way that the Nazis employed a “final solution” against the Jews.  

Such rhetoric would make even the most diplomatic of diplomats think twice. Speaking remotely to one of his favorite crowds, the elite globalist eggheads that gather annually at Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Kissinger made his splash. The former secretary of state’s about-face, after previously recommending policies that critics have described as verging on Russian appeasement, stirred the crowd at the genteel Alpine resort. 

“Before this war, I was opposed to membership of Ukraine in NATO, because I feared that it would start exactly the process that we are seeing now,” Mr. Kissinger said. “The idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions is no longer meaningful. I believe Ukrainian membership in NATO would be an appropriate outcome.”  

Writing about Ukraine in the Washington Post in 2014, Mr. Kissinger argued against provoking Russia, saying Kyiv “must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” One of his top recommendations: Ukraine “should not join NATO.”

In his Davos address, Mr. Kissinger remained adamant that dialogue with Russia must be maintained in order to avoid disaster. Further antagonism could lead to a Russian collapse, he warned, and the disintegration of a nuclear power would be catastrophic. Instead, he promoted negotiations even while the war rages.

In an interview with the Bloomberg news agency last summer Mr. Kissinger said his prior comments about negotiation were misreported. A dialogue must start even while the war is on, he said, but discussions about issues like the future of Crimea should be left for post-conflict talks. 

Mr. Kissinger argues that negotiations during the war should only be about territory Russia seized since the 2022 invasion, and that Crimea and other territories Russia invaded earlier will be discussed later. Until now, this notion was partially backed by President Biden, but that has begun to change. 

While Washington officials have long opposed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Pentagon refused Ukraine’s requests for arms capable of recapturing the occupied peninsula. Now, however, Mr. Biden is considering sending such weapons to Ukraine, “even if such a move increases the risk of escalation,” the New York Times reported Wednesday. 

President Zelensky has repeatedly said the war will end only when all territory that Russia has captured, including Crimea, is once again part of his country. “Ukraine will leave nothing of its own to the enemy,” he said last month.

Several Western officials are backing Mr. Zelensky to the hilt. “We don’t know when the war ends, but Ukraine has to win,” Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, told the Davos crowd Wednesday in the most Reagan-like statement of the gathering. “I don’t see another choice,” the  37-year-old said. 

As Western leaders toughen their rhetoric, so does the Kremlin. America and its allies are using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia, Mr. Lavrov claimed Wednesday. “They are waging war against our country with the same task: the ‘final solution’ of the Russian question. Just as Hitler wanted a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question, now, if you read Western politicians, they clearly say Russia must suffer a strategic defeat.”

Those remarks “represent an insensitive, delusional and dangerous misinterpretation of historical facts and must be condemned,” the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Dani Dayan, tweeted Wednesday. “They are an utter distortion of the history and an affront to the actual victims of Nazism.”

The 99-year-old Mr. Kissinger has seen crises come and go. As a Cold War hawk, he warmed up to Beijing in order to weaken the Soviet Union. Now, he says that for America, Communist China represents “a more complex challenge than the Soviet Union ever was.” 

Long seen as the most consummate proponent of “realism” in statesmanship, Mr. Kissinger’s early enthusiasm for diplomacy with Russia increasingly seems unrealistic. No wonder our most nuanced diplomat is now willing to publicly use words that even our most hawkish Russia opponents have hesitated to utter.