Diplomats and leaders across Europe hailed Henry Kissinger, the U.S. diplomat who pursued through the 1970s a policy of détente with the Soviet Union that sparked arms-control accords to help keep Cold War tensions from boiling over into nuclear war, after the announcement of his death at the age of 100.
Kissinger, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who died on November 29 at his home in Connecticut, was praised by many for his work while serving two U.S. presidents -- Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Born in Germany, Kissinger joined Richard Nixon's administration as national security adviser in 1969, a job he kept after the president resigned amid the Watergate scandal and was succeeded by Gerald Ford. He also served as secretary of state under both Nixon and Ford, playing a prominent role in U.S. foreign policy from 1969 to 1977.
"A kind human and a brilliant mind who, over one hundred years, shaped the destinies of some of the most important events of the century. A strategist with attention to the smallest detail," European Council President Charles Michel said.
Known for his thick glasses and gravelly voice, Kissinger, an Orthodox Jew, left Germany in 1938 and moved with his family to New York.
He worked as a translator for the U.S. Army during World War II before eventually going on to Harvard University, where he earned a PhD in philosophy.
"The name of Henry Kissinger is inextricably linked with a pragmatic foreign policy line, which at one time made it possible to achieve détente in international tensions and reach the most important Soviet-American agreements that contributed to the strengthening of global security," Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
Despite criticism from many that he turned a blind eye to U.S. war crimes in Vietnam, which he helped extricate the United States from, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 along with Le Duc Tho "for jointly having negotiated a cease-fire in Vietnam."
He was also heavily criticized for failing what some analysts said were policies that gave the green light to repressive regimes in Latin America.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev (2nd left) and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (left) meet U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (2nd right) and U.S. diplomat Walter J. Stoessel (right) in Moscow in January 1976.
But in the decades after he left government, Kissinger, arguably the most identifiable secretary of state in modern times, continued to be sought out informally by officials around the world for advice, and remained in the spotlight with his opinions on everything from China to the Middle East to Russia.
"He was a problem solver, whether in respect of the Cold War, the Middle East or China and its rise," former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
Commenting in January this year on Putin's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kissinger told the World Economic Forum in Davos that NATO membership for Kyiv would be an "appropriate outcome" once the conflict ends.
"The idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions is no longer meaningful," he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kissinger's impact on foreign policy thinking and the global stage would live on long past the diplomat's death.
"The century of Henry Kissinger was no easy one, but its great challenges fit his great and curious mind. He changed its pace and the face of diplomacy," Kuleba said on X, formerly Twitter.