Putin: Russia should have launched a special operation earlier

Russia was supposed to start a special military operation in Ukraine earlier, hope was given by the opportunity to agree within the framework of the second Minsk agreement. This statement was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We did the right thing in terms of launching a special military operation. Why? Because, it turns out, no one was going to fulfill all the Minsk agreements. Leadership of Ukraine in the words of the former president [Петра] Poroshenko also said this. He signed, but was not going to perform. I expected other participants in the process to be sincere with us. It turns out that they also deceived us,” he said.

Putin also drew attention to the fact that he was disappointed with the comments of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the Minsk agreements. On December 7, in an interview with Die Zeit, she statedthat “everyone understood” that the Minsk agreements only froze the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but did not solve it. According to her, the 2014 agreements gave Kyiv “priceless time.”

The Trilateral Contact Group (authorized by Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) in September 2014 signed the first Minsk agreements, which ended the active part of the hostilities in the south-east of Ukraine. The second Minsk agreements stopped the escalation of the conflict in February 2015 in the Debaltseve region.

The Minsk package of measures included a ceasefire in the southeast of the country, the withdrawal of weapons, an amnesty, the resumption of economic ties, as well as a constitutional reform in Ukraine. Its result was to be the decentralization of power in Ukraine, taking into account the granting of a special status to certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. However, the Minsk agreements were never implemented.

The special operation in Ukraine began on February 24. Putin called the protection of the inhabitants of Donbass, as well as the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, its goals. During the special operation, Russian troops took control of the LPR, as well as most of the DPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Subsequently, these territories became part of Russia, and on October 19 martial law was introduced in the regions.