MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th February, 2023) Russia made considerable efforts to make Kiev, Berlin and Paris finally start to implement the Minsk Agreements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
"You know how much effort the Russian side made on the negotiation track in order to force the Ukrainian side, as well as Berlin and Paris, to finally take the path of implementing the obligations that the parties assumed under these Minsk Agreements. It was a lot of effort. How many negotiations were attended personally by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, as well as (his aides) Surkov, Kozak, and others. Naturally, the main task was still to force Kiev to fulfill its obligations," he said at a regular briefing.
Vladislav Surkov, a former presidential assistant and the special representative for Ukraine, earlier in the day, said that he, while working on drafting the Minsk Agreements, had not expected that they would be implemented.
"No," he said in an interview with Russian political expert Alexey Chesnakov when asked if he believed at the time that the agreements would be implemented.
The Minsk Agreements were negotiated by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in 2014 in a format known as Normandy Four. They outlined conditions for a political resolution to the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kiev and the breakaway Donbas region.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted he never intended to implement the Minsk Agreements. Both former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande, who participated in the Normandy format, admitted the same earlier and said that negotiating the Minsk Agreements with Russia was a stalling tactic to buy time to arm and train the Ukrainian military with no intention to implement their provisions. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in turn, said that the Normandy format had been nothing but a "diplomatic imitation."
