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Lavrov likens proposals to freeze Ukraine crisis to worse version of Minsk agreements

"The Minsk agreements were final. If anyone had bothered to realize at the time that they were exactly that. We were talking about a small part of Donbass, if we are being totally honest," the minister continued

MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. Freezing the conflict in Ukraine along the current line of engagement would be worse than the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview broadcast on Rossiya-1 television.

The interview with journalist Marina Kim aired on the program called "Evening with Vladimir Solovyov."

"Some people now have begun to look more soberly at the Ukrainian situation and say: ‘Well, what has been lost cannot be taken back, so let's freeze it somehow.’ Anyway, what is being proposed by people that are sought to be presented as changing their position drastically and wanting to stop the war - they all the same are saying that, ‘Let's have a ceasefire along the engagement line for 10 years, and then we'll see.’ This is the same as the Minsk agreements, but in a new package. Even worse," he said.

"The Minsk agreements were final. If anyone had bothered to realize at the time that they were exactly that. We were talking about a small part of Donbass, if we are being totally honest," the minister continued. "Everything collapsed because [Vladimir] Zelensky and before him [former Ukrainian President Pyotr] Poroshenko were strongly against granting this part of Donbass, which would have remained Ukrainian, a special status - primarily in the form of allowing people to speak their native language."

Minsk agreements

Brokered by Russia, Germany and France, the second Minsk agreements were concluded between the breakaway regions of Donbass (the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic) and the Kiev regime. Their goal was to put an end to the armed conflict in Ukraine and keep Donbass as part of the country by granting the region broad autonomy. These agreements were completely sabotaged by Kiev with the support of Germany and France.

German and French leaders every year told EU summits that Russia failed to meet its commitments under the Minsk agreements, while they ignored anything done by Kiev. They used the same excuse to endlessly extend the EU's initial economic sanctions against Russia that were first introduced in 2014.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel later conceded that the purpose of the Minsk agreements, as perceived by the West, was to buy time to rearm the Kiev regime and prepare it for a military operation to take control of Donbass.