LUGANSK, December 30. /TASS/. Rodion Miroshnik, a former ambassador of the Lugansk People’s Republic in Moscow, has said that former French President Francois Hollande, by saying that the Minsk agreements were an effort to give Kiev time, confirmed world leaders can tell lies.

On Friday Hollande, who participated in developing measures to comply with the Minsk agreements in 2015, said former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was right when she said the agreements were needed to give Kiev a respite to train the Ukrainian military for a new conflict.

"Thousands of statements that Russia derails the peace process and doesn’t want a peace settlement were complete lies at the top level of country leaders," Miroshnik said. "Hollande has confirmed that by signing the Minsk agreements, neither he nor Merkel didn’t plan on a peace settlement. Their goal was just to buy a respite for Ukraine to prepare for war. That means the former leaders of the mediating countries, the guarantor countries - France and Germany - stated they deliberately prepared the Ukrainian army not only for an aggression in Donbass, but also for military operations against Russia."

According to the former ambassador, France wasn’t going to follow UN Security Council Resolution 2202 that endorsed the set of measures to comply with the Minsk agreements, although the country’s representative in the Security Council voted for it.

Merkel said in an interview with the German publication Zeit in December that the Minsk agreements were an attempt to give Ukraine time to become stronger. She said it was clear to everyone that the conflict was being frozen and the problem wasn’t resolved but it gave Ukraine precious time. She expressed doubt NATO countries could have supported Kiev at the time as much as they are doing it now.

Russian President Vladimir Putin later said that Merkel's words about the Minsk agreements were absolutely unexpected and disappointing for him.