MOSCOW, February 17. /TASS/. It was the Russian Foreign Minister who initiated binding of the Minsk agreements in the UN Security Council, therefore statements on Russia’s alledged unwillingness to implement them are nonsense, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Friday.
"All the talk about whether Russia planned to implement the Minsk agreements or not is nonsense, taking into consideration the fact that it was [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov who personally initiated the drafting of a UN Security Council resolution, thus making their implementation mandatory," she said.
Earlier, former presidential aide Vladislav Surkov reported that while working on the Minsk agreements to resolve the situation in Ukraine, he did not assume that they would have to be implemented. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that at the final stage of the work on the Minsk agreements, Moscow felt a certain pessimism due to Kiev's behavior.