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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
