“There is a way out of this spiral of aggression”

Mr. Egeland, you have mediated between conflicting parties for decades, most notably between the PLO and Israel. The result was the 1993 Oslo peace process to resolve the Middle East conflict. Do you also see one in view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine?

It would be dangerous to see this conflict as some kind of given natural disaster that is now sweeping Ukraine and that cannot be changed. That’s not it. There is a way out of this spiral of aggression. Because these are man-made decisions and they can be reversed. Europe and the US must not see the recent development as irreversible, as if there were a forever insurmountable rift between Russia and the West.