In February 2015 Ukraine and Russia signed the Minsk Agreement. The document brokered by Germany and France provides a road map for peace in eastern Ukraine – empty words, Russian President Putin is convinced seven years later in his New Year’s speech.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the West of using Ukraine to destroy Russia. The Russian army is fighting in Ukraine to defend the fatherland, said the head of the Kremlin in his New Year’s speech, in which he indirectly accused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande of lying: “The West has talked about peace, while preparing for an attack,” the state news agency TASS quoted the Russian president as saying. “And now he freely admits it without hesitation.”
In his allegations, Putin refers to the Minsk peace agreement brokered by the German and French governments and signed by Russia and Ukraine in the Belarusian capital in February 2015. It provided a roadmap for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and was intended to end fighting in Donbass.
At the beginning of December, Merkel explained in the “Zeit” that the agreement should give Ukraine time “to become stronger”. Ukraine “also used this time, as you can see today,” Merkel explained in the conversation. “The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltseve in early 2015, Putin could easily have overrun it.”
During the week, French President Hollande confirmed this view in an interview with the Ukrainian portal “The Kyiv Independent”. “Yes, Merkel is right on this point,” replies the 68-year-old when asked about the former Chancellor’s statements.
For the Russian president, these answers are proof that the EU and the US are using Ukraine to “weaken and divide Russia,” as he says in his New Year’s address. “We didn’t allow that in the past and it won’t happen in the future either,” Putin assures his people.
However, as Merkel also mentioned in the interview with “Zeit”, it was the Russian leadership around Putin that broke the Minsk agreement first: On February 17, pro-Russian militias and Russian troops stormed and captured the railway town of Debaltswe in the Donbass – three Days after the ceasefire negotiated in the agreement went into effect.
