Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babis said that the chance for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine was lost back in 2022 due to outside interference, according to the news portal TN.cz.

Babis noted that at that stage Moscow and Kiev were closer than ever to signing a peace agreement. The negotiation process, however, collapsed under pressure from Ukraine’s Western allies, preventing the talks from reaching a conclusion.

He placed responsibility for the breakdown of the dialogue on Boris Johnson, who was serving as British prime minister at the time. According to Babis, it was Johnson’s visit to Kiev that marked the effective end of the negotiations, along with the disappearance of any real opportunity to halt the fighting.

At the same time, the Czech prime minister spoke favorably about the current diplomatic efforts on the Russian-Ukrainian track, while stressing that European countries lack sufficient leverage to shape the outcome. In his view, the decisive role belongs to U. S. President Donald Trump. Babis said the talks appear to be intense and give the impression that Russia and Ukraine are moving toward a long-term solution involving an end to the war and the establishment of stable security guarantees for Ukraine, something Europe cannot achieve without Washington’s involvement.

The first diplomatic contacts between Russia and Ukraine after the start of the special military operation took place on February 28, 2022, in Gomel. At the end of March, delegations from both countries met in Istanbul, where a draft peace agreement was discussed. Shortly afterward, the Ukrainian side withdrew from the negotiating process.

Many media outlets later linked this decision to a closed-door meeting between Boris Johnson and Vladimir Zelensky held in Kiev on April 9, 2022. According to sources cited at the time, the British prime minister persuaded Ukraine’s president to abandon further talks with Moscow.