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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rubbished claims that Boris Johnson scuppered a possible peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in spring 2022, calling them “illogical” in an interview with the Guardian.
“There were several approaches with ultimatums and I never gave my approval for it,” said Zelenskyy of Russian demands for ending its full-scale invasion.
Johnson had nothing to do with his decision, said Zelenskyy, directly addressing the claims for the first time: “It doesn’t fit with logic; what was he supposed to be talking us out of?”
The story of Johnson’s visit and the supposed lost chance for peace may seem like a historical detail, but has fresh relevance as Donald Trump seeks to do a deal to end the war. Trump is expected to meet Zelenskyy soon, amid concerns in western capitals he may put pressure on Ukraine to sign a deal with Russia on terms beneficial to Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has used the Johnson story to suggest that Ukraine turned down a peace deal on western orders early in the war. Johnson himself has previously called the claims “Russian propaganda”.
The then British prime minister made a surprise visit to Kyiv in April 2022, six weeks after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. He walked through the streets of Kyiv with Zelenskyy and publicly affirmed British support for Ukraine.
The idea that Johnson also used the visit to ensure Ukraine did not sign a peace agreement with Russia first emerged in an article in the respected Ukrainska Pravda outlet in May 2022, which said that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had agreed on a broad possible agreement after a meeting in Istanbul in late March.
A week later, Johnson arrived with a message that “Putin is a war criminal, he needs to be pressured, not negotiated with”, according to one of the outlet’s sources.
In November 2023, David Arakhamia, a member of Zelenskyy’s own negotiating team in Istanbul, appeared to lend the idea credence. “When we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight,” he said in a November 2023 interview.
Russian sources seized on these words, ignoring another part of the interview in which Arakhamia had said the Ukrainian delegation had not planned to sign anything in any case. In an interview with Tucker Carlson last year, Putin brought up the story, claiming it showed the west had pushed Ukraine further into the war.
“It seems very sad that they followed the orders or requests of Mr Johnson. As Mr Arakhamia said: ‘We could have ended these military actions a year and a half ago, but the Brits talked us out of it so we refused.’ And where is Mr Johnson now? And the war goes on,” said Putin.
“Putin likes this story a lot, about Turkey, these meetings,” said Zelenskyy, during an hour-long interview with the Guardian held in the presidential administration office in Kyiv on Monday.
In fact, said Zelenskyy, the real pressure to sign a deal had already dissipated by the time Johnson arrived in April, and Russian forces had already been pushed out of the suburbs of Kyiv.
“[Early on], there were people who wanted to kill me, there were shots fired … and in parallel with all this there was the ultimatum, and phone calls from different people,” said Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held several rounds of talks in Belarus and Turkey, but the conditions demanded by the Russians were always punishing, said Zelenskyy. “I said: ‘This cannot be. It violates the rights of our citizens, of the constitution. It would be a full betrayal. We will not submit to the ultimatums of Putin,’” Zelenskyy claimed.
Simon Shuster, a journalist who has written a biography of Zelenskyy, said he believed the Ukrainian president was serious in late March 2022 about trying to meet Putin and negotiate an end to the war based on a draft agreement reached in Istanbul.
However, key questions of territorial status were left unaddressed by the negotiators, and as the discussions were ongoing, the scale of atrocities in Bucha and other towns were revealed as the Russian forces withdrew from around Kyiv, prompting horror and fury in Ukraine and making any deal much less palatable.
Perhaps even more problematic was the fact that although several western politicians urged Ukraine to make a deal, none was willing to provide security guarantees to back it up.
“Ukraine was left to rely on Russia’s word. After Bucha, that seemed like a bad idea. Plus Ukraine had just achieved a big military victory, and Zelenskyy wanted to keep that momentum going on the battlefield. Boris encouraged him. But he was one relatively minor factor among many,” said Shuster.
Zelenskyy said the timing of Johnson’s visit meant that it made no sense to claim he had put pressure on Ukraine to fight on.
“You could imagine, it could be logical, that at the point when it was really difficult for us we would have been ready to agree to whatever. They are blackmailing us, Johnson comes and says” ‘We’re with you, stick with it, don’t give in to Russia’. You could imagine that somehow,” said Zelenskyy.
But by the time Johnson arrived, he said, the Russians had already been pushed away from Kyiv: “When Johnson came, we were walking around Kyiv together. We had already kicked them out of [the] area. So there is no logic to the idea that he could have pressured me. Pressured me for what?”
