UNITED NATIONS, February 12. /TASS/. Kiev’s good faith implementation of the Minsk agreements was the only way to bring peace to Ukraine, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said.
"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 said at a Russia-initiated United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine.
The decision to launch the special military operation was made only when "it became absolutely clear that all possible measures of political and diplomatic settlement had been exhausted and there was no other way to save the people of the LPR and DPR (Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, respectively - TASS) from being exterminated," he stressed.
The Minsk agreements between the DPR, LPR, and Kiev were geared to reintegrate the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, which broke away from Ukraine after the state coup in 2014, back into Ukraine. Russia, France, and Germany acted as the guarantors. Ukraine, being a party to the agreements and the subsequent Package of Measures on their implementation, repeatedly stated that it was not going to act on them. After the beginning of the special military operation, France’s former President Francois Hollande and Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had put their signatures under the agreements, acknowledged that these accords were meant to give Kiev time to get prepared for a large-scale conflict.