“The Minsk peace agreement no longer exists, there is nothing to respect,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin in a statement Tuesday evening.
The agreement concerning eastern Ukraine was “killed off long before Russia decision”to recognize the separatist regions of Ukraine, it also added.
The Minsk agreements have been signed in 2014 to stop the ongoing conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Kyiv administration.
The agreements provided for a cessationfire in the region and one prisoner exchange during also allowing the Kyiv administration to make a constitutional amendment that give Donbass special status.
pro-Russian separatists, on on the other hand, were supposed to withdraw their weapons from the Ukrainian-Russian border.
However, the implementation of the agreements has been hampered car both parties accuse each other of violate the ceasefirefire.
On Monday, Putin ordered a ‘peacekeeping operation’ in The Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk after recognizing the independence of the separatist regions, opening the way to provide them more military support – a direct challenge to the West which will fuel fears that Russia may imminently invade Ukraine.
The neat staging move announced in the Kremlin could lead for new punishments on Russia and the flies in the face of European efforts for a diplomatic solution to the escalating crisis, which has brought East-West relations to a new weak and threatened trade. Great Britain prime minister called it a “violation of international law.”
He came in the middle of a spike in skirmishes in eastern regions that Western powers believe Russia could use as a pretext for a attack on Western-looking democracy that defied Moscow’s attempts to snatch it back in son orbit.
Putin justified son decision in a wide-ranging pre-recorded speech accusing NATO for the current crisis and calling the US-led alliance a menace existential for Russia. Swipe through more one century of history, he painted today’s Ukraine as a modern construction inextricably linked to Russia. He accused Ukraine of inheriting historical lands from Russia and, after the Soviet collapse, of being used by the West to contain Russia.
