Russia UN Ambassador: Minsk agreements was the only path to peace in Ukraine

“Kiev’s faithful and consistent implementation of the Minsk agreements was the only chance to bring peace to Ukraine. The settlement required first of all a direct, inclusive and mutually respectful dialogue between the parties to the conflict - Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kiev, as was envisaged by the agreements,” he noted.

According to him, Kiev got away with everything. Western countries could not find the courage to admit Kiev’s sabotage of the Minsk agreements. “But both they and you, those who are present in this room, kept on repeating it like some kind of mantra, absolutely ungrounded allegations that Russia was dodging the implementation of the Minsk agreements, although Russia was bearing no obligations under the Package of Measures and all attempts to shift the responsibility onto Russia and present it as a party to the conflict were absolutely void,” Vasily Nebenzya pointed out.

It is already known today thanks to the revelations of former Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, former President Francois Hollande of France, and Ukraine's former President Petro Poroshenko, neither Kiev nor those who acted as guarantors of the Minsk agreements were going to do anything. They cynically used the respite to arm the Ukrainian military. According to the permanent representative, certain representatives of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission were involved too. Instead of monitoring ceasefire, they actually spied for Kiev.

Moreover, the West was hopeful that with the help of the “neo-Nazi and Russophobic monster” represented by the Kiev regime, it would be able to weaken Russia. “We must also recognize that preventive work of the Security Council, the importance of which many of our Western colleagues are so eager to underscore, has failed. After all, they all understood perfectly well what was actually happening and what implications it might have, but they did nothing, hoping that the neo-Nazi and Russophobic monster they had raised on our borders would be able to defeat or at least weaken Russia,” the diplomat said.

Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya also recalled that even after the start of the special military operation, the West prevented Kiev from signing the peace treaty that was already initialed in Istanbul. “So they are complicit in the tragedy and are fully responsible for the consequences of Ukraine's reckless and fatal policy to sabotage the Minsk deal and reject the treaty in Istanbul,” he added.