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The Minsk agreements of 2014-2015 gave Ukraine time to strengthen the Armed Forces and prepare for war against Russia, former French President Francois Hollande confirmed the claims previously made former German Chancellor Merkel.
The former French president made his claims in an interview with The Kiev Independent.
Journalists asked Hollande if he agreed with the statement of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the agreements allowed to “freeze” the conflict between Russia and Ukraine but not resolve it. Hollande confirmed that the signing of the Minsk agreements was aimed to “give Ukraine precious time.”
“Yes, Angela Merkel is right. The Minsk agreements stopped the Russians’ offensive for a while,” he replied. According to Hollande, it was important “to know how the West will take advantage of this respite.”
Since then, Ukraine has “strengthened its military position”, the country’s army has become better trained and equipped compared to 2014.
“It is the merit of the Minsk agreements that the Ukrainian army has received such an opportunity,” he believes.
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Francois Holland was in service from 2012 to 2017. The first Minsk agreements were signed in 2014, and the second package of agreements was signed in 2015 by the Trilateral Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in Donbass, consisting of representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE. France and Germany participated in the approval of Minsk-2.
The agreements were aimed to consolidate the main measures to resolve the military conflict in Donbass. They included the commitment of the parties to cease fire, to abandon the deployment of heavy weapons in the buffer zone area, to exchange all prisoners of war.
However, most of the agreements were violated and have never been realised.
During the years, the Western officials, including Merkel and Holland continued to assure the world that they brought peace to Donbass. Today, after “peace’ turned into “war” in the Western politics as the Western elites are assuring their people that inflaming war in Ukraine is the way to their security and peace in Ukraine, they feel free to reveal their lies in an attempt to gain more support to the Western policy among the population.
However, a lot of Europeans were deceived by lies of their leaders.
All the parties to the agreement despite Russia lied in their goals, and negotiations were conducted only to “pump up” Ukraine with weapons. In his turn, Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded that the decision to launch a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 was the right one. The Kremlin said that Russia has reason not to trust Western countries.
