Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed her government’s duplicity regarding the conflict in Ukraine by confirming that the 2014 ceasefire agreement was meant to give Kiev time to build up its military.
In an interview with Zeit magazine published on Wednesday, Merkel said that the Minsk protocol brokered by Germany and France was “an attempt to give Ukraine time,” which it used to “become stronger” as evidenced on the battlefield now. She was referring to the first of the two documents known collectively as the “Minsk agreements” that were designed to help Kiev reconcile with rebels in the east, who had rejected the outcome of an armed coup in the capital in 2014.
Berlin and “by extension, the West” never intended to implement the Minsk agreements, Zakharova concluded based on Merkel’s remarks, Zakharova explained in a social media post on Thursday.
The US and its allies “simulated supporting the UN Security Council resolution” which endorsed the roadmap to peace while pumping weapons into Ukraine and “ignored all crimes committed by the Kiev regime … for the sake of a decisive strike against Russia,” the Russian diplomat added.
In the Zeit interview, Merkel stated that Russia “could easily have overrun” Ukrainian troops in 2015, adding that she doubted that “NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now”. The second part of the Minsk agreements was signed in February 2015 amid a military defeat suffered by Ukrainian troops, which attempted to quash the Donbass militias.
Source: Agencies
