Lavrov accused the West of destroying the territorial integrity of Ukraine

By admitting that they have no plans to implement the Minsk agreements, Western countries have destroyed the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated this in an interview with TASS.

“When openly co-authors [президента России] Vladimir Putin, according to the Minsk agreements, admitted that they, in fact, misled him and did not intend to implement them at all, they were the ones who destroyed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which they are so constantly concerned about now,” he said.

Lavrov recalled how last year former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, ex-French President Francois Hollande and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the need for the Minsk agreements was due to the opportunity to “buy time in order to replenish the military arsenals of the Ukrainian regime against the Russian Federation.”

If Western countries had complied with the Minsk agreements, then the territorial integrity of Ukraine would not have been violated. ‘Cause that’s what they were all about [минских договоренностей]“: territorial integrity is restored by granting a special status to the Donbass – Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics,” Lavrov added.

The first Minsk agreements were signed in September 2014 by representatives of the trilateral contact group (Russia, Ukraine, OSCE). They completed the active part of the hostilities in the southeast of Ukraine. The second Minsk agreements were signed already in 2015. Representatives of two European countries – Germany and France – also participated in them.

At the end of 2022, Angela Merkel admitted that all participants understood: the Minsk agreements would only freeze the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but would not solve it. Later, former French President Francois Hollande and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke in a similar way. In the Kremlin notedthat such a “game of thimbles” only aggravated the situation and “unleashed them [Киеву] hands to organize a massacre of Russians in their country,” which subsequently led to a special operation.