An airline boss who helped rescue almost 1,000 people from Ukraine as Russian tanks crossed the border in 2022 said he is pessimistic about prospects for peace.

Peter Foster, chief executive at Air Astana, the flag carrier of Kazakhstan, said progress towards a ceasefire in talks brokered by the US appears a distant prospect.

Mr Foster said he is keen to restore flights to Ukraine should the conflict end, but regards the “wildly changing” views emanating from Washington, Moscow and Kyiv as a negative sign.

He said: “I can’t see it. If it happens it happens, but we are not counting on it. Just like everybody else, we wake up every morning and the news has changed overnight.”

Mr Foster found himself caught up in the 2022 invasion after joining an Air Astana flight to Kyiv to evacuate Kazakh expatriates. Russia mobilised just hours after he landed, however, forcing the plane to leave and scuppering plans for an airlift.

The Briton instead helped organise a fleet of buses and cars which carried 896 evacuees on the slow journey to the Polish border as Moscow’s forces began pounding Ukraine.

He said: “We landed at 10 past midnight, that aircraft left an hour later, and the bombs and missiles started falling at about 4:50am.

“So we had to bus them out and fly them from Poland. I remember driving late at night after about an hour and a half’s sleep, trying to negotiate my way down the autoroute.”

Air Astana has not flown to Ukraine or Russia since, while its network of services to Europe, formerly the focus of operations, remains disrupted by the closure of Russian airspace.