Ukraine (bbabo.net), - Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement in an interview with the newspaper Die Zeit caused a revival of commentators. Frau Merkel thereby confirmed the words of Ukrainian officials, primarily ex-president Poroshenko, that Kyiv was never going to fulfill the signed agreements, but simply fooled around.
No one forced the long-term head of the German government to give such arguments. So the audience has every right to interpret them literally - that is, as a confession of deceit, or rather a conscious deceit. The line is drawn in the spirit of what Moscow has been saying for a long time — Ukraine simply imitated the political process, preparing for revenge, and the Western countries (Germany and France as direct participants and the United States as an indirect curator) assisted it in this.
We dare to assume that this is a greatly simplified interpretation, but in reality everything was somewhat different. In a sense, it's even worse, because any conscious line of behavior is a more understandable and predictable option than following an arbitrarily directed current. There is a suspicion that Merkel had no special ulterior motive either when the Minsk agreements were signed or when they were not implemented. And in both cases, Berlin and Paris sincerely believed that they were working tirelessly for the benefit of peace and security in Europe.
The Minsk agreements, which were put into effect the second time, were the result of Ukraine's military defeats, and accordingly, the task of its Western sympathizers was to stop the war by any means. On the sidelines then they said that Merkel did not actually advise Poroshenko to sign the proposed text, because she understood that the scheme enshrined there was beneficial to Moscow. The idea that the special conditions prescribed in Minsk for the return of Donbass to Ukraine would allow Russia to have a kind of “stop valve” to block further geopolitical moves by Kyiv suited the Russian side. In the Kremlin, apparently, they really believed that this was possible, although there were opponents of this approach. The Ukrainian side was guided by its traditional political culture: there are no final agreements at all, so what, in principle, is the difference - we'll sign it now, then we'll see.
Did Berlin have a plan or intention (Paris in the person of François Hollande should not be considered separately - the French president then performed the function of the entourage brought by Merkel)? Hardly. There were two instincts. The first is that Ukraine is a priori right, but Russia is not. The specific circumstances are unimportant. The second is to find a way to turn it all off so that you don't have to constantly puzzle over how to resolve the issue and get distracted by a subject that was, in general, secondary to European politics at the time.
The last one didn't work. In fact, it really turned out as Merkel is now saying - thanks to the Minsk agreements, it was possible to gain time for the rearmament of Ukraine and its preparation for war with Russia. But to think that this is how it was originally intended is to embellish Europe's strategic talents. But the first (Ukraine is still right) has turned into the actual participation of Europeans in the war, the prospects for which are vague.
In a sense, if the Minsk Documents were considered by the participants as a serious tool for achieving some goals (albeit different ones), perhaps they would play a useful role. But all sides, in addition to the proclaimed one, had another, real agenda, so that as a result, everything really turned into a screen for preparing something completely different. Paradoxically, the loser was the one with the smallest gap between the two agendas. The declared and true tasks of Russia differed less from each other than the rest. And Moscow really sought to implement the Minsk agreements as closely as possible to their letter, while the rest, at least, proceeded from the spirit, but in fact - rather from what Merkel said - a delay, no more.
Why Angela Merkel is now saying such things is understandable. In the current system of Western coordinates, diplomacy with Putin itself, even in hindsight and seemingly for good purposes, is considered a criminal conspiracy. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who had invested a lot in “rapprochement through interweaving” since the time of Schroeder's chancellorship, simply confessed: he was mistaken, sorry. Merkel is looking for rational excuses, or rather, invents them, reshaping that situation to suit the current one. And he does it in such a way that Putin, it turns out, is right: how can we negotiate then? But nobody cares anymore.
bbabo.Net