UK's Boris Johnson Sabotaged Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal on US Orders

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Efforts to achieve a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine were thwarted by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the behest of the United States, Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin said on Thursday.

"He [Johnson] blocked the peace efforts with Washington's blessing, obviously, because he could not do it on his own accord. He arrived there, and the document, which had already been initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation, [David] Arakhamia, was thrown into the wastebasket, and Ukraine started fighting. These are the consequences of what the [former] prime minister of the United Kingdom did," Kelin said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster TRT World.

In late November 2023, Arakhamia, the head of Ukraine's ruling Servant of the People party's faction in the parliament and the former chief negotiator with Russia, said Johnson was the person who had talked Kiev out of signing an agreement with Moscow to end the conflict in the spring of 2022. He also said Ukraine rejected the ceasefire deal due to its contradicting the constitution's clause on the country's Euro-Atlantic aspiration.