Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could have used at least a tenth of the amount that the West allocated as aid to Kyiv to reintegrate the Donbass under the Minsk agreements, but did not. This was announced on March 19 by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova in her Telegram channel.
She recalled the visit of Russian leader Vladimir Putin to Mariupol the day before, during which the head of state inspected houses, schools, roads and infrastructure under construction in the region.
“And all this was built in less than a year, literally under the shelling of the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova said.
The diplomat wondered what prevented Zelensky from spending at least 10% of Western aid to Ukraine on the construction of such facilities, and came to the conclusion that “nationalism, corruption and drugs” were to blame.
On March 18, it became known that the President of the Russian Federation visited Mariupol on a working trip, where he examined a number of city facilities, and also spoke with local residents. It is noted that this is Putin’s first visit to the Donbass.
Later, on March 19, the head of state said that the Russian side hoped to resolve the Donbas issue peacefully, but Western partners led it by the nose and prepared Ukraine for hostilities.
On December 7, 2022, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the purpose of the Minsk agreements was to try to give Ukraine time to build up Kyiv’s forces in the confrontation with Russia. The politician noted that all countries participating in the Minsk agreements understood that the conflict in Ukraine was only suspended, and the problem itself was not resolved.
On February 22, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that Putin had made a lot of efforts to implement the Minsk agreements, which cannot be said about Moscow’s Western partners in the Normandy Four.
The Minsk agreements are a package of documents adopted in 2014–2015 to resolve the situation in southeastern Ukraine. The Minsk Protocol was signed on September 5, 2014 in the capital of Belarus by members of the contact group, as well as the heads of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). The so-called Minsk-2, a set of measures to implement the Minsk agreements, was agreed in Minsk in February 2015 by the leaders of Germany, Russia, France and Ukraine at the summit.
