"I hope the Ukrainians will match the heroism they have shown with wisdom," Kissinger warned an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, adding with his famous sense of realpolitik that the proper role for the country is to be a neutral buffer state rather than the frontier of Europe.

As The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports, Kissinger's comments came amid growing signs that the Western coalition against Vladimir Putin is fraying badly as the food and energy crisis deepens, and that sanctions may have reached their limits.

The former US secretary of state and architect of the Cold War rapprochement between the US and China told the gathering of elites that it would be fatal for the West to get swept up in the mood of the moment and forget the proper place of Russia in the European balance of power.

"Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome.

Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante.

Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself," he said.

The architect of the détente with China under the Nixon administration suggested that 'status quo' ante means "how things were before," implying that Ukraine should accept a peace deal to restore the situation on February 24, where Russia formally controlled the Crimea peninsula and informally controlled part of the Donetsk region in east Ukraine.