Minsk agreements

I mean, again...

We had Minsk 1, we had Minsk 2.

First, they did kind of a ceasefire, and the Ukrainians ignored it.

The Europeans, I mean, Merkel, let's not forget, in the second half of 22, Merkel, and then followed closely in her footsteps by Hollande, they ran to the media to laugh how they had pulled a fast one on Putin.

They weren't interested in these casualties.

And of course, during that whole time, the Russians were trying to get the Minsk Accords implemented, and they just were coming up against a brick wall.

You know, there obviously wasn't an interest.

And in fact, you know, later we had these leaders say that, like Merkel and Hollande in France and Poroshenko and in Ukraine that they never had any intention of implementing.

So you could say that was like the Minsk Accord period of the phase of the war, you know, in which, again, that basically the Ukrainians were shelling the people of Donbass, especially, you know, Donetsk city was getting shelled almost every day and people were getting killed there every other day.

It went on and on and on.

That, of course, ended in February 24th, 2022, when the SMO was launched.

But it's nowhere near enough to occupy the territory that they took or to seriously threaten Kiev.

Middle-level missiles could go there in five minutes.

So if you look at the Russian perspective here, as John Mearsheimer, the prominent professor at the University of Chicago says, Putin did everything he possibly could to get those Minsk Agreements implemented so he wouldn't have to invade.

Can you explain for people what the Minsk Agreements are? Well, there were several agreements that were made after the Russians invaded Ukraine.

The first and most important was was uh putin sent his top advisor and so did zielinski zielinski's man actually still ahead of his parliamentary faction his name was david arachamia okay they went to belarus and then they went to istanbul six weeks after the invasion they concluded an agreement It was initialed by both, you know, we're going to stop, there'll be a ceasefire, there'll be limits on the troop levels in each country, we'll not deal with Crimea, and there will be a referendum in Donbas, which is Donetsk and Lugansk, and, you know, the Russian language would be permitted there again.

And this is the Donbass region.

Because we have been there already at some point.

Everybody remembers about Minsk agreements, about high hopes that were pinned on this.

Actually, it was a very good way out for Ukraine to remain within its borders of 1991 at that moment, because the end game was return of Donbas.

under the sovereignty of Ukraine with certain caveats, of course, with certain autonomy.

But that was what Minsk agreements actually meant.

It all was sabotaged.

This pause in the hostilities was used by the West to rearm Ukraine and to prepare it for the war with Russia.

Recently there were a number of these statements of this kind of the former politicians who were involved, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, who confirmed that this was just a tactical ruse on behalf of the West.

I mean, it is talking about hybrid war against China, against Russia, about army Ukraine against Russia.

There was at this time, the very time that you're talking about a framework agreement, the Minsk Agreement, which existed and to which everybody was in theory signed up, which the United States voted for when it was taken to the UN Security Council, which could have been used.

as the map towards achieving peace in Ukraine.

But instead of doing that, instead of taking that approach, we have this approach, which is a militaristic, great power maximizing power competition approach.

We can't trust the Americans to, uh, to keep their promises, and certainly not the Europeans.

You know, we've had the experience of Minsk and everything else.

You know, maybe they'll promise to say, "Okay, yeah, no NATO," but how can we believe them?

Right.