What Awaits the Minsk Agreements: Putin Comments

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated during a press conference that the Minsk agreements are no longer valid after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. This was reported by Gazeta.ru.

According to him, Russia has been engaged with the Minsk agreements for nearly eight years and has been interested in their implementation. The country’s leader emphasized that reaching a compromise on the Minsk agreements was not easy, but a resolution was found, and it represented real progress towards the peaceful resolution of the conflict.

“We have been working on this for not just seven, almost eight years; when I say ‘we,’ I mean Russia, and your obedient servant is also the author of these documents. Therefore, I want to emphasize again that we were interested in implementing this package of measures,” he said.

At the same time, as Putin noted, the authorities in Kyiv did everything to bring the Minsk agreements to a halt. The Russian president remarked that they had “killed” the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics long before the decision to recognize them was made.

According to him, the recognition of the Donbas republics was prompted by Kyiv's public declaration of its intention to not fulfill the Minsk agreements.

The first Minsk agreements for resolving the Donbas conflict were established in September 2014, signed by representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the leaders of the DPR and LPR. A year later, the second Minsk agreements were created, sanctioned by Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France.