Merkel Admits Minsk Agreements Gave Ukraine Time to ‘Get Stronger’
Former German Chancellor has said the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not surprise her because the Minsk agreements had been 'eroded'
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Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, said in an interview that the Minsk agreements were intended to give Ukraine much needed time to get stronger in the face of Russia aggression.
Merkel told a German newspaper that Kyiv used the time to get stronger, “as you can see today.”
“The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltsevo in early 2015, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could easily have overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine,” she said in the interview, according to Russian news outlet RT.
New news outlet noted that Ukraine’s defeat at Debaltsevo resulted “in the second Minsk protocol being signed in February 2015. Merkel said that it was ‘clear to all of us that the conflict was frozen, that the problem had not been solved, but that gave Ukraine valuable time.’”
RT also noted that Pyotr Poroshenko, who became president of Ukraine after the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, told the domestic audience in August 2015 that Minsk was a ruse to buy time for a military build-up. He admitted as much to the West in July 2022, in an interview with German media.
Earlier this month, the former chancellor told Der Spiegel that the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not surprise her because the Minsk agreements had been “eroded.”
Merkel she said could feel her influence waning during her last few meetings with Putin.
Following the U.S.-led coup that overthrew Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych in early 2014, Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and align with Russia.
During the 2014 uprising, some 97 percent of the citizens of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea voted to leave Ukraine for integration of the region into the Russian Federation.
In 2014, Ukraine and these separatists agreed to the 12-point Minsk Agreement that called for a ceasefire in the region, but both sides violated the deal.
In February 2015, the Minsk II Agreement, created by France and Germany, also called for a ceasefire, which Ukraine violated.
Russia said the deal requires Kyiv to allow separatist authorities to form their own central government. Ukraine said it will never allow Moscow to have a de facto veto on foreign policy decisions.
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Putin said in a recent interview that Moscow “sincerely” tried to implement the agreement, and said he believed that Luhansk and Donetsk would somehow be able to “reunite with Ukraine, following the Minsk agreements.”
But he now said it is obvious that his recent annexations of these areas should have occurred earlier because “maybe then there wouldn’t have been so many casualties among civilians and children.”
“Well, at least it happened eventually,” he said.
And just days prior to the Russian invasion, Putin signed friendship treaties with the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in the region. He also signed the presidential decree recognizing the independence of these separatist regions before the war.