Six months after former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in an interview that there was never any question of implementing the Minsk agreements, and that they were just a way for Ukraine to buy time, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the same thing in an interview with the Zeit, thus finishing off what little credibility Western countries have.
In June 2022, in an interview with several Western media outlets, including Deutsche Welle, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko publicly admitted that there had never been any question of implementing the Minsk agreements, and that they had only been intended to give Ukraine time.
“We got what we wanted. We did not believe Putin, just as we do not believe him now. Our task was, first of all, to remove the threat, or at least to delay the war. We gave ourselves eight years to restore economic growth and build up the strength of the armed forces. That was the first task – and it was accomplished […]. Despite the fact that the war lasted eight years – as far as a large-scale military operation is concerned, I think the Minsk agreements have fulfilled their role,” said Petro Poroshenko.
This is not the first statement by Petro Poroshenko that the Minsk agreements were just a way for Ukraine to buy time, so it has not particularly caught the attention of those who have long known that Kiev had no intention of implementing these agreements.
But where it becomes shocking is when former German Chancellor Angela Merkel says exactly the same thing, on 7 December 2022, in an interview with the Zeit (available in full here). https://archive.ph/OY5cG
Translation:
“I considered the 2008 discussion on the membership of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO to be a mistake. These countries did not have the necessary conditions for it, and the consequences of such a decision had not been fully considered, both in terms of Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and for NATO and its rules of assistance. And the 2014 Minsk agreements were an attempt to give Ukraine time.”
Translation:
“We all knew that this was a frozen conflict, that the problem was not solved, but this is precisely what gave Ukraine precious time.”
I would remind you that Germany was the guarantor of the Minsk agreements, and especially of their implementation by Ukraine! Clearly, from the start Angela Merkel, and therefore also François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, knew perfectly well that not only would Ukraine not apply the Minsk agreements, but that this would leave Kiev just enough time to prepare for a resolution of the conflict by force! Moreover, the telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron that took place four days before the launch of the Russian special military operation, and which was leaked by the French President, clearly showed that the latter knew that Ukraine was going to attack, since he asked the Russian President not to react to Ukrainian provocations (in other words not to intervene to defend the Donbass).
When one has this information in hand, and recalls the endless litanies of France and Germany complaining that Russia (a guarantor like them and not a party to the conflict) was not applying the Minsk agreements, one thinks that the level of hypocrisy of the German and French authorities is literally cosmic!
The Russian authorities of course reacted strongly to Angela Merkel’s statement, starting with Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, who said that this interview gave Russia proof of what she had been saying for years about the lack of will on the part of the West to push Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements. Above all, the purpose of the agreements was to serve as a diversion while NATO countries pumped arms into Ukraine and then reignited the conflict.
“In this revelation, the main point was that, from the West’s point of view, it was all a fabrication, flirting with the use of international law for the sole purpose of supplying the Kiev regime with weapons. It was all about “distracting” the eyes of the international community from the real events on the territory of Ukraine, the humanitarian catastrophe, the endless killings, which claimed more than 13,000 victims on all sides before 2022. This had only one purpose: to supply the Kiev regime with weapons and to prepare it politically to launch the hostilities that we saw at the beginning of 2022, when the Kiev regime started to launch deadly strikes against the Donbass. This left no room for any other action than that taken by the Russian Federation: first recognizing these territories as sovereign, and then accepting them as part of the Russian Federation so that they can really defend them, to save their lives,” said Maria Zakharova.
But above all, for the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Angela Merkel’s statement proves that the West does not shy away from any lie, and sits on international law when it suits it, regardless of the consequences for innocent civilians.
“This confession by former German Chancellor A. Merkel sounds terrible. Merkel sounds terrible: forgery (as a method of Western action), machinations, manipulations, all sorts of distortions of the truth of law and law that one can only imagine. They knew even then, in 2015, when they were holding talks for several hours, that they would never implement it and that they would supply arms to the Kiev regime. They had no mercy for anyone: women, children, civilians in Donbass, and even Ukraine as a whole. They needed a conflict. They were ready to do it already in 2015,” she added.
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