Zelenskyy takes credit for derailing Minsk Agreement meant to establish peace in eastern Ukraine

New Delhi: Zelenskyy, on his tour to Europe where he was accorded a hero’s welcome, has claimed that he was behind the derailing of the Minsk agreements meant to establish peace in the Donbas region, flash point of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Ukraine was never serious in the Minsk Agreement Zelenskyy admitted to Ukraine’s bad faith negotiations in an interview with the German paper Der Spiegal. He looked at the agreements as mere “concessions” on Ukraine’s part and never intended to implement them. The only use they were made of, Zelenskyy claims, was prisoner swap with the two breakway east Ukrainian republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. He claims that he had openly told about his intentions to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, the leaders of France who had sponsored the agreements and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who were left “surprised” at the position. “But as for Minsk as a whole, I told Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel: ‘We cannot implement it like this,’” Zelensky stated. “I told [Putin] the same as the other two. They were surprised and said: ‘If we had known beforehand that you would change the meaning of our meeting, then there would have been problems even before the summit’”, he told Der Spiegel. Zelenskyy is not the first Ukrainian leaders to have taken credit for derailing the peace negotiations. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko the first to take credit last year, according to a Russia Today report. Ukrainian leaders have repeteadly said that the agreement to Kyiv was just a ruse to buy enough time to strengthen its military. “Kyiv never intended to abide by them and used the deal to create powerful armed forces”, Poroshenko was quoted by Russia Today to have said. The Minsk agreement The agreements were signed in 2014 and 2015 between Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany and the representatives from the Ukrainian breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbas region. The agreements were a roadmap to peace in the Donbass where Russian speaking majority provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk had rebelled against Kyiv after the 2014 Maidan coup, which saw the impeachment of Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russia president. The agreements included recognition of a special status for the both the Donbas republics by Ukraine’s parliament, demilitarisation of the region, elections for local self-government and The agreements, although with a special status, envisioned re-integration of Ukraine and establish a sustainable peace in the region. However, as claimed by Zelenskyy and Poroshenko before him, Kyiv never saw the agreements as favourable and just negotiated in bad faith to strengthen military in the meantime. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.