Accessibility links

Breaking News

The Daily Vertical: RIP Minsk (Transcript)


When the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France meet in Paris today to discuss the Minsk ceasefire, they may as well be attending a funeral.

Because if the Minsk agreement is not dead, it is -- at the very least -- clearly on life support.

And this was all very predictable from the very start. Minsk, in many ways, was a legal fiction.

It was signed under duress amid fears that Russia would mount a full-scale invasion of Donbas.

It pretended that Moscow was a mediator in a conflict in which Moscow was the aggressor.

And it made unreasonable demands on Ukraine to overhaul its domestic political arrangements with a Kalashnikov pointed at its head.

This wasn't a ceasefire. It was blackmail. It was extortion.

WATCH: Today's Daily Vertical

Ukraine signed the Minsk agreement in good faith, hoping it would stop the killing in Donbas, even though the authorities in Kyiv knew it was a very bad deal for them.

Russia, on the other hand, viewed Minsk as a tool to pursue their war in Ukraine by other means, under the cover of an alleged ceasefire.

The authorities in Kyiv have made honest efforts to fulfil their obligations under Minsk.

But in a democracy, passing constitutional amendments and laws providing for elections in a warzone has -- not surprisingly -- proven to be politically challenging.

Russia hasn't even tried to fulfil its end of the bargain.

The Kremlin and its proxies in Donbas have violated the ceasefire practically from day one, starting with the siege of Debaltseve and continuing to this day.

So a year and three weeks after it was signed, Minsk is all but dead in the water.

And we should have no illusions about why this is the case.

Keep telling me what you think on the Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.

RFE/RL has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government.

If you are in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine and hold a Russian passport or are a stateless person residing permanently in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine, please note that you could face fines or imprisonment for sharing, liking, commenting on, or saving our content, or for contacting us.

To find out more, click here.

XS
SM
MD
LG