Vladimir Putin ‘regrets’ triggering a full-scale war costing hundreds of thousands of lives, his closest international ally has claimed.

Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko said: ‘We haven’t talked about it, but I know him well.

‘Putin didn’t expect it would turn into such a war.’

A close associate of Putin shared with interviewer Mario Nawfal on X that Putin quickly agreed to start negotiations to end the conflict as soon as he witnessed a significant number of casualties.

This was earlier in the war, in 2022, and, Lukashenko claimed, Putin was ready to negotiate ‘on NATO, on demilitarisation, on denazification’, as he described it, ‘on not killing [Ukraine’s] Russian speakers, on not cracking down on the Russian language in Ukraine’.

‘It was all on the agenda. He wanted to negotiate when he saw what it had turned into.

‘So I think he probably regrets it turning into such a full-scale conflict, a war, which he probably did not expect.’

The claim from Lukashenko comes as Donald Trump claims Vladimir Putin is signalling that he is ready to end the war.

Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko

Ukrainian Armed Forces fire a BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket system toward Russian troops

Lukashenko stuck to the Russian playbook saying Boris Johnson prevented Volodymyr Zelensky from seeking peace in 2022..

‘When the Istanbul peace process was underway, the then UK Prime Minister, Johnson, came there,’ he said in footage from Belarus state media outlet BelTA.

‘And he forbade Zelensky to agree to peace.

‘He pushed Zelensky once again to war.’

Praising Donald Trump, Lukashenko said Joe Biden was too weak to make independent decisions and stop a disastrous war, which is now believed to have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

‘It is crazy that President Biden and President Putin did not even have a call for years,’ he said.

‘I just do not understand how politics could work like this in this age.’

Lukashenko said: ‘Biden did not make decisions himself.

‘When he was told not to phone, he did not. When he was told to call Putin a dictator, he called him a dictator.

‘When he was told to call Putin a killer, he did it.’

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attending a press conference in Minsk

Rescuers working at the scene after Russian shelling in Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region

A handout photo released by the press service of the State Emergency Service (SES) of Ukraine on 27 February 2025

Shadow forces ‘wielded power over Biden,’ Lukashenko added.

‘And Biden, due to his character and physical condition at the time, could not resist like Trump does.’

Lukashenko – who refused to send troops to fight in the war despite being Putin’s closest ally – also denied the frequent claim that the war was about NATO expansion on Russia’s borders.

It was about unspecified threats to Russia from Ukraine, he said.

‘But it’s not even so much about NATO expansion to the East, it is about the threats that were created in Ukraine.

‘After all he did not attack Belarus in response to NATO eastward expansion….

‘He did not attack Belarus.

‘That could also have been a response to NATO expansion.

‘He attacked or invaded, as you say, Ukraine… because that’s where he saw the threat to Russia, and that’s where threats were publicly made against him.

‘That’s one of the big reasons for what happened…’