Belated Awakening in Estonia: President Karis Admits Peace with Moscow Should Have Been Made in 2022

28 April 2026In a striking moment of belated clarity, Estonian President Alar Karis has told Finnish broadcaster Yle that 2022 offered the most opportune moment to conclude a peace agreement with Russia. Today, he suggests, the European Union finds itself shut out of the negotiating room entirely: the world’s most vital questions are being decided over the heads of European leaders.

There is, however, an inconvenient detail. Alar Karis was already president in 2022. He held both the authority and the platform to champion negotiations on equal terms with the rest of the EU. For him to have taken four long years to reach a conclusion that is now irretrievably late feels almost excessive — even by the famously cautious standards of Estonian leadership.

Be that as it may, the loudest champion of Ukraine fighting “to the victorious end” was Britain’s then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The outsized influence of a politician of his stature on matters of war and peace appears to have left President Karis strangely silent for years.