The Kremlin is not short of adventurous justifications for its invasion, but spokesman Peskov now sees the reason for the war in the Normandy format and the resulting Minsk Agreement. This should not be pacifying, but give Ukraine time to prepare for the fight in Donbass.
According to the Kremlin itself, Germany, France and Ukraine have long been working towards a military solution to the conflict in Donbass. This was shown by the latest statements in the EU and Ukraine on the conflict, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the state news agency Tass. Russia therefore sees its decision to invade Ukraine confirmed.
“We know that for (Petro) Poroshenko as well as for (Angela) Merkel and (François) Hollande (…) the Minsk Agreement was nothing more than a screen with which to express their intentions, namely to prepare Ukraine to solve the Donbass problem by force,” Peskov claimed.
Together with Hollande, Merkel and Hollande had mediated between Ukraine and Russia in the so-called Normandy format in order to seek a solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass, where Ukrainian government troops have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Both were instrumental in the Minsk Agreement of 2015 – but the peace plan was never fully implemented. Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for this. A few months after the end of Merkel’s term in office, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year.
Most recently, former Ukrainian President Poroshenko explained in a BBC documentary that the Minsk Agreement, which was intended to resolve the conflict in the east, gave the leadership in Kyiv time to build a powerful army. Former Chancellor Merkel had previously defended her policy towards Russia and said in an interview that the agreement had bought Ukraine time. The Russian leadership has repeatedly interpreted such statements as meaning that Ukraine was being specifically armed for war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did everything right with his decision to start the “special military operation,” Peskov said. At the same time, he criticized the demand made by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda for an increase in Western arms deliveries to Ukraine. The Baltic states and Poland would do everything to provoke another confrontation between Russia and the “collective West”. “But they don’t think much about the consequences.”
