The revelation comes a few weeks after Germany's former chancellor admitted that the peace agreement struck in the Belarusian capital in February 2015 was a contrivance used to buy time to build up Ukraine’s military after it had been shattered in fierce fighting with Donbass militias.
The Minsk Peace Accords were never about bringing peace to Donbass, former French President Francois Hollande has admitted.
“Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture. Indeed, the Ukrainian army [of 2022] was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk Agreements to have given the Ukrainian Army this opportunity,” Hollande said in an interview with Ukrainian media this week.
The former French president, who left office in 2017 with an approval rating hovering in the single-digits, had the courtesy to admit that while the Minsk agreement was functioning, Russia was meeting its obligations as a guarantor.
“Every month, (former Ukrainian President) Petro Poroshenko, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and I had long telephone conversations in which we exchanged information on the progress of the Minsk protocols. Even if we saw that there was an obvious unwillingness, there was still a dialogue” via the Normandy Format, Hollande said.
Another of the Minsk peace deal’s “merits” was that it “didn’t allow the area controlled by separatists to expand,” Hollande added.
Confession is Good for the Soul
Hollande’s comments are the third confirmation in two months by a senior official involved in the Minsk negotiations that the West and its Ukrainian client state were never serious about implementing the peace agreement.
On December 7, Angela Merkel said that Minsk “was an attempt to buy time for Ukraine,” and that “Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the Ukraine of today,” she said.
A month earlier, Petro Poroshenko told Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus that he “needed the Minsk Accords to get at least four years to form the Ukrainian Armed Forces, build up the Ukrainian economy and train the Ukrainian military together with NATO to create the best armed forces in Eastern Europe, created according to NATO standards.”
Signed on February 12, 2015 by Ukraine and guarantors Russia, Germany and France, the Minsk Peace Agreements were a thirteen-part ceasefire and peace deal which would have allowed Kiev to restore control over the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in exchange for broad, constitutionally-mandated autonomy.
Over the seven years after the treaty was signed, Kiev stalled on implementing the agreement, and continued low-intensity shelling and sabotage attacks against the Donbass. An attempt by President Volodymyr Zelensky to implement the treaty in late 2019 sparked widespread protests in Kiev led by Poroshenko, hardline pro-EU parties, and ultranationalist fighters and Donbass war veterans, prompting Zelensky to back down.
In February 2022, observing a severe escalation of tensions along the line of contact in the Donbass, and suspected Ukrainian sabotage attacks targeting senior military officials in Donetsk and Lugansk, Russia recognized the pair of self-proclaimed republics as sovereign nations, and, on February 24, kicked off a special military operation to ‘demilitarize’ and ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine amid fears that Kiev was preparing an imminent all-out assault on the Donbass. In September, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the Russian-administered areas of Kherson and Zaporozhye became part of Russia after status referendums.
Commenting on Merkel’s admission about Minsk this month, President Putin expressed shock and disappointment.
“Frankly speaking, I did not expect to hear such a thing from the former federal chancellor. Because I always proceeded from the idea that the German leadership behaves sincerely with us. Yes, they were on Ukraine’s side, supported Kiev, but it always seemed to me that Germany always sincerely sought a peaceful settlement based on the principles that we had agreed on, which were achieved, including within the framework of the Minsk process,” Putin said.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who hosted the Minsk negotiations in the Belarusian capital back in 2015, did not mince words about Merkel’s comments, saying the situation was “not just disgusting” but “abominable,” and that Merkel “acted in a petty, obnoxious way” trying to bring attention to herself.
Putin, Lukashenko Agree on Deployment of Joint Regional Grouping of Forces
Earlier in the day, at October, 2022, the Belarusian president held a meeting with the country's military and security forces, and told reporters that Minsk had been warned through unofficial channels about plans to carry out an attack on Belarusian territory from Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko have agreed on the deployment of a joint regional group of forces.
"In connection with the aggravation of the situation on the western borders of the Union State, we agreed to deploy a regional grouping of forces from the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. This complies with our documents. They say that if the threat reaches the level it has now, we begin to use the Union State grouping of forces," Lukashenko said on Monday, his remarks cited by the Belta News Agency.
The Belarusian president clarified that the Belarusian Army constitutes the basis or core of this group of forces.
"I must inform you that the formation of this grouping has begun. It has been going on for, I think two days. I gave an order to start forming this group," Lukashenko said.
Earlier in the day, in a meeting with the country's military and security forces, Lukashenko warned Kiev not to move forward with any plans to carry out a first strike on Belarus.
"I have already said today that Ukraine is not just contemplating, but planning strikes on the territory of Belarus. Of course, the Ukrainians absolutely do not need this. Why would they need to open a second front on our southern border, which is their northern border? This is madness from the military point of view. They are being pushed by their patrons to unleash a war against Belarus in order to draw us into it," Lukashenko said.
The Belarusian president said the message received from unofficial channels was that Ukraine was planning to create a 'Crimean Bridge Part II'-style scenario in Belarus.
"My answer was simple: tell the president of Ukraine and other insane individuals that the Crimean Bridge will seem like flowers to them if they touch even one meter of our territory with their dirty hands," Lukashenko said.
The president ordered the military and security forces, including the KGB, to determine what else needs to be done to strengthen Belarusian security, "taking into account the rapidly changing situation."
Commenting on Lukashenko's comments later in the day Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that "interaction in various fields, including defense, is constantly being discussed during bilateral contacts between Presidents Putin and Lukashenko," and that this interaction is spelled out in the Union State's military doctrine.
Despite its territory being used by Russian forces in the early stages of Moscow's military operation operation in Ukraine, Belarus has so far managed to stay out of the conflict, with its forces deployed westward to face down NATO forces concentrated in Poland and the Baltics.
The Ukrainian military launched several attacks against Belarus, with Lukashenko reporting in March that a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile had been shot down by Belarusian air defense troops. A second attack - targeting Belarusian military targets, was foiled in June.
The Belarusian Army has 45,000 active-duty personnel, and 290,000 reservists, among whom 120,000 are members of the country's territorial defense forces.
Russia and Belarus are members of the Union State - a supranational organization created in the late 1990s aimed at the integration of the countries' political, economic and defense policies. The Union State's military doctrine states that any aggression against either of its members constitutes aggression against both, requiring "appropriate measures" to be taken "using all the forces and means" at the countries' disposal to neutralize the threat.
The Ukrainian crisis entered a new phase on Saturday after Ukrainian security forces carried out a terrorist attack against the Crimean Bridge - a key piece of infrastructure linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland to the east. Russia responded by carrying out strikes against infrastructure across Ukraine on Monday.
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