Were the Minsk Agreements a peace attempt or a prelude to war? by Lorenzo Maria Pacini
(2025-03-06 at 07:01:05 )

Were the Minsk Agreements a peace attempt or a prelude to war? by Lorenzo Maria Pacini

Until the United States learns to negotiate honestly and transparently, any attempt at reconciliation will be based on specious ideas and hypocrisy.

Ten years on from the Minsk Agreements 1 and 2, it is time for an objective reflection on what was one of the tensest and most disregarded moments in the history of contemporary diplomacy.

Ten years ago

The fighting between Kiev and Donbass was supposed to have been resolved with the Minsk Protocol, signed in September 2014, but the ceasefire quickly failed. After heavy losses and the encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Debaltseve, Germany and France intervened to promote a new peace initiative. Thus, in February 2015, the Minsk-2 Agreement was signed by Kiev, Donbass, Germany, France and Russia. This treaty focused exclusively on resolving the internal conflict between Kiev and Donbass, without explicitly mentioning Russia as a party to the conflict. However, to address the root causes of the crisis, a further agreement between NATO and Russia would have been necessary to manage the geopolitical structure of Europe.

Minsk-2 provided for the withdrawal of heavy weapons and a diplomatic commitment from Kiev in the Donbass, with the approval of constitutional reforms to guarantee the autonomy of the region. In particular, the Ukrainian Parliament would have had to approve a resolution to define the territories subject to special status, in accordance with the 2014 Minsk Memorandum. The autonomy of Donbass aimed to safeguard local linguistic and cultural rights, potentially preventing Ukraine from joining NATO in the future. However, Kiev never entered into a dialogue with Donbass nor approved the necessary law, thus blocking the implementation of the agreement.

Although the United States had signed the Minsk-2 Agreement and the United Nations had ratified it as a resolution, Washington,D.C. did not exert any pressure on Kiev to respect it. The official United States position was that Minsk-2 represented conditions imposed by Russia by force, and therefore its implementation would have meant giving in to the demands of an aggressor. At the same time, the United States began to militarily strengthen Ukraine, arming and training its army to shift the balance of power. In addition, several American officials publicly opposed Minsk-2, considering it an unacceptable surrender to Moscow.

From 2015 to 2022, Western powers continued to proclaim Minsk-2 as the only path to peace, but in fact they undermined its application. Initially it seemed that only the United States and the United Kingdom were opposed to the treaty, while Germany and France appeared too weak to enforce it. However, in the following years, Berlin and Paris also contributed to redefining and renegotiating the terms of the agreement. The European Parliament even attributed "special responsibility" to Russia in its implementation, despite the fact that Moscow was not part of the conflict according to the text of the agreement.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, both Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande revealed that Minsk-2 was not really intended to establish a lasting peace, but rather to buy time for Ukraine to strengthen itself militarily. Merkel stated that the agreement worked because Kiev became stronger, while Hollande confirmed that the war with Russia could only be resolved on the battlefield. Similar statements were also made by Ukrainian President Zelensky, who admitted that he never intended to implement Minsk-2, preferring to postpone its implementation until a more favorable context was reached. Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko also stated that the objective was to gain time to strengthen the Ukrainian army.

The failure of the world order to guarantee the application of the Minsk Agreement has further eroded confidence in diplomatic instruments. German General Harald Kujat emphasized that the West, by sabotaging Minsk-2, violated international law and contributed to the escalation of the conflict. Jack Matlock, former United States ambassador to the USSR, stated that the war could have been avoided if Kiev had respected Minsk-2, recognizing the Donbass as an autonomous region and renouncing NATO. However, NATO has never recognized any responsibility for the outbreak of the war.

United States influence in Ukraine

After the Orange Revolution in 2004 and, above all, after Maidan in 2014, the United States has progressively expanded its influence on Ukrainian governance. Numerous American citizens have obtained important roles in the Ukrainian government, such as Natalie Jaresko (Minister of Finance), Aivaras Abromavicius (Minister of Economic Development) and David Sakvarelidze (Deputy Attorney General). Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, was appointed governor of Odessa. This pattern of United States penetration had already been observed in the Baltic States in the 1990s and 2000s.

Ukrainian Attorney General Viktor Shokin denounced American influence in political appointments and claimed that Washington,D.C. considered Ukraine its own fiefdom. Shokin was removed from office after launching an investigation into the energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors sat Hunter Biden, son of then-United States Vice President Joe Biden. The latter exerted pressure for Shokins removal, threatening to block one billion dollars in aid. Subsequent documents and testimonies revealed Joe Bidens direct involvement in his sons activities in Ukraine.

After 2022, American influence over Kiev increased even further. The Central Intelligence Agency helped reorganize the Ukrainian secret services, in particular the GUR, transforming it into an operational unit oriented against Russia. This service subsequently conducted operations inside Russia, including attacks targeting pro-Russian personalities.

Kiev and the opposition

After 2014, Kiev systematically purged any pro-Russian political and cultural opposition, consolidating a radical nationalist identity. The main pro-Russian parties, such as the Party of Regions and the Communist Party, were dissolved. As support for Zelensky began to decline, repression intensified.

Independent media outlets were also shut down or placed under state control. In 2021, Zelensky banned three opposition television channels, and in 2023 censorship was further strengthened. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, historically linked to Moscow, has been the target of repressive measures, with priests being arrested and church property confiscated.

After the 2014 coup, NATO advisors supported Ukraine in evaluating its own security and defense sector, leading to the approval of the Comprehensive Assistance Package for the country in 2016. The objective of this program was to "strengthen and consolidate NATO support for Ukraine", as well as "reform its Armed Forces in line with Atlantic standards to ensure their interoperability by 2020". A 2017 report by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency showed that the Kremlin believed that Washington,D.C. was laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a perception amplified by events in Ukraine.

Ukraine therefore began to build a NATO-trained army, consisting of 700,000 active soldiers and one million reservists. Of all the members of the Atlantic Alliance, only the United States and Turkey had larger armed forces, making Ukraine a strategically important frontline state.

The idea of using Ukraine as a proxy force against Russia had been advocated as early as 1993 by George Soros, who envisioned a new world order with NATO as the dominant institution. According to Soros, Western societies would have difficulty accepting high casualties among their own soldiers, which is why it would be more cost-effective to use Eastern European troops: "combining Eastern European manpower with NATOs technical capabilities would strengthen the Alliances military potential, reducing the risk of losses for member countries and thus removing a brake on their willingness to intervene".

Washington,D.C. saw Ukraine as a key tool in countering Russia as a strategic rival. In 2019, the United States Armys Office of the Quadrennial Defense Review funded a 325-page report by the RAND Corporation entitled "Extending Russia: Competing on Favorable Ground," which explored strategies for pushing Moscow to overextend itself militarily or economically and lose influence domestically and internationally.

The RAND report identified Ukraine as an area where Russia was "bleeding", offering strategic opportunities: "providing more military equipment and support to the Ukrainians could push Russia to intensify its involvement in the conflict, increasing the costs it has to bear". However, the risk of provoking a Russian reaction was also recognized: "although this may increase costs for Moscow, it could at the same time represent a problem for the United States and Ukraine". The prospect of NATO expansion was also considered useful for keeping tensions high between Russia and Ukraine: "although Ukraines accession to the Alliance remains unlikely in the short term, continuing to promote it could strengthen Kievs resolve and induce Moscow to intensify its efforts to prevent it".

Some analysts compared the strategy to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan: "an increase in military support to Ukraine would raise costs for Russia, leading it to provide more assistance to the separatists, strengthen its military presence and face higher expenses". The strategy, however, had to be "carefully calibrated" to wear Russia down without provoking a full-scale war: "Increased lethal support for Ukraine would exploit Russias main vulnerability, but it had to be managed in a way that increased costs for Moscow without triggering a wider conflict in which Russia would have geographical advantages."

In 2017, United States Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham visited Ukrainian troops in the Donbass to encourage them to intensify the conflict against Russia. McCain said: "I am sure you will win, and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need." Graham reiterated: "Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of the offensive.

In 2019, Oleksii Arestovich, advisor to President Zelensky, predicted a Russian invasion within three years. In his opinion, Ukraines accession to NATO was necessary to avoid absorption by Russia, but would lead to a large-scale conflict. Arestovich believed that "the threat of NATO membership would have pushed Russia to launch a large-scale military operation to avoid this scenario". He estimated the probability of a Russian invasion at "99.9%" between 2020 and 2022 and saw war as an opportunity: "victory would be guaranteed because it would be a conflict by NATO proxy".

Meanwhile, NATO was also strengthening its military presence in the Baltic States. In 2020, the United States deployed multiple-launch rocket systems in Estonia, 70 miles from the Russian border, and in 2021 conducted exercises to simulate attacks on Russian air defense systems. In Moscow, these operations were seen as provocations, similar to those that Washington,D.C. would not tolerate within its borders.

In 2021, Ukraine accelerated the process of integration into NATO standards, while the United States worked on modernizing Ukrainian ports to accommodate American warships. That same year, Ukraine and NATO announced the construction of two new naval bases on the Black Sea, financed by the United Kingdom.

Large-scale military exercises have multiplied. Defender Europe 2021 involved 28,000 soldiers from 27 countries, while the Sea Breeze 2021 exercise in the Black Sea saw the participation of 24 nations. The incident between the British warship HMS Defender and Russia reinforced Moscows perception that NATO was using Ukraine as a strategic outpost.

In June 2021, Kurt Volker, former United States ambassador to NATO, stated that the American strategy towards Russia had to be based on confrontation: "any accommodation would be a victory for Putin. Success is confrontation." In August 2021, the United States and Ukraine signed the United States-Ukraine Strategic Defense Framework, consolidating Kievs role as a de facto member of NATO.

In January 2022, Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official, published an article entitled "The U.S. must prepare for war with Russia over Ukraine", arguing that Washington,D.C. should demand Russias withdrawal from Ukraine and Georgia and, if necessary, be prepared for a direct military confrontation.

For Moscow, these developments signaled the inevitability of a confrontation.

What remains

The failure of the Minsk Accords represents one of the most significant diplomatic debacles in the management of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, highlighting the inability of multilateral diplomacy to prevent a full-scale military escalation. Or, rather, they represent the objective impossibility of dealing with the West or with anyone with a Western dependency.

The absence of a binding enforcement mechanism and differences in interpretation between the parties have irreversibly undermined their implementation. Ukraine has insisted on a sequential approach, subordinating political concessions to Russia to the prior withdrawal of Moscow-backed paramilitary forces and the restoration of Ukrainian control over its eastern borders. Russia, on the other hand, supported a simultaneous implementation of the provisions, demanding immediate legislative autonomy for the separatist regions before any concessions on security matters.

The structural differences between the signatories, together with the lack of political will on the part of Germany and France to exert coercive pressure, made the Minsk Agreements a diplomatic exercise without substantial effectiveness.

Furthermore, the deepening of military cooperation between Ukraine and NATO accentuated the perception of Russian insecurity, contributing to the definitive erosion of the agreement. Minsk II ultimately proved to be a mere instrument of temporary containment rather than a genuine framework for pacification, with the result that the crisis turned into open conflict, confirming the failure of regional security guarantees.

Until the United States learns to negotiate honestly and transparently, any attempt at reconciliation will be based on specious ideas and hypocrisy.

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