Zelensky Brags That He Torpedoed Minsk Agreement With Russia
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel called deal a decoy
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Just when you thought the Minsk agreements could not be any more worthless, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview that he told the key players in 2019 — then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Russian President Vladimir Putin — that the deal was essentially a “concession” and he never had any interest in honoring the agreement.
He said the three were “surprised” by his admission, RT reported, citing the Der Spiegel interview.
“But as for Minsk as a whole, I told Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel: ‘We cannot implement it like this,’” Zelensky said. “I told [Putin] the same as the other two. They were surprised and said: ‘If we had known beforehand that you would change the meaning of our meeting, then there would have been problems even before the summit.’”
Zelensky recently acknowledged his country’s eight-year conflict in the Donbas between Russian separatists that resulted in the death of over 14,000 people, which Russian President Vladimir Putin cited before the February invasion.
Ukraine and Russia are divided over who was at fault during the years-long conflict in the eastern region of the country. But 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 recognising the independence of these separatists regions before the war.
Following the United States overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, Ukrainian forces attacked the Donbas region.
Ukraine has long accused Russia of providing weapons and troops to these separatists in Donbas, a charge that Russia denied. Moscow, in response, accused Kyiv of committing a “genocide” against the pro-Russian separatists in the region, which Ukraine denied.
FACTS: 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 also called for a ceasefire, which Ukraine has, as Zelensky noted, violated.
Al Jazeera wrote that Minsk II was interpreted differently by Russia and Ukraine: Kyiv wanted a ceasefire, “control of the Russia-Ukraine border, elections in the Donbas, and a limited devolution of power to the separatists – in that order. Russia views the deal as obliging Ukraine to grant rebel authorities in Donbas comprehensive autonomy and representation in the central government, effectively giving Moscow the power to veto Kyiv’s foreign policy choices.”
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.
Eastern Donbas has seen some of the fiercest fighting since Russia launched its invasion in February. The industrial region includes Donetsk and Luhansk.
Merkel slipped earlier this year and said the Minsk agreements were an effective ruse to give Ukraine time to “get stronger” for its next conflict with Russia.
Merkel made the admission during an interview with a German newspaper. She said Ukraine used the ceasefire after the two peace deals as a 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 Debaltseve 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.
Last Month, Vassily Nabenzia, Russia’s top diplomat to the UN, said the nearly year-long war in Ukraine could have been avoided if leaders in Kyiv enforced the Minsk Agreements, which turned out to be a ruse by the West to buy time to rearm Ukrainians for a future fight.
Nabenzia told the UN Security Council that “everything could have ended differently for Ukraine” if it followed the agreements that he said paved the way for peace by granting special status to Russian speakers in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics.
Nebenzia said it is obvious that France, Germany, and Ukraine never had any intention to uphold the agreement that served as nothing more than a “smokescreen behind which they secretly armed Ukraine in order to set it against Russia.”
LOVE YOUR INTERVIEWS GERALD!
Zelenskyy is a moron. I'll be very happy when I hear he has died in action or he has been assinated.