Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani apologized on Wednesday for the fall of his government.

He fled the capital city Kabul last month as Taliban forces approached the outskirts of the city.

“It is with a deep and profound regret that my own chapter ended in a similar tragedy to my predecessors – without ensuring stability and prosperity,” he said. “I apologize to the Afghan people that I could not make it end differently.”

In a statement posted on Twitter, Ghani said he’d left under the direction of his security team, adding, “Leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life, but I believed it was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens.”

He had been accused by former allies of betrayal immediately after he fled to the United Arab Emirates.

There were reports that he had left with millions of dollars in cash, but the former World Bank official denied those allegations, calling them “completely and categorically false.”

Ghani expressed gratitude to Afghans for their sacrifices over the last 40 years of war and said he deeply regretted that his leadership ended “without stability and prosperity.”

Mujib Mashal, the South Asia correspondent for The New York Times, noted that Ghani’s statement to the Afghan people was published only in English, and not in Pashto or Farsi, two languages widely spoken in Afghanistan.

He was first elected president in 2014, after a heavily disputed election over claims of voter fraud.

On Wednesday, the Taliban’s new acting prime minister, Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, told Al-Jazeera that former officials should return to Afghanistan and that the Taliban “will guarantee their security and safety.”

Also, the Taliban agreed to let 200 foreigners leave on charter flights from Kabul on Thursday, Americans among them.