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LPR envoy says Donbass agreed to Minsk deal because it was unable to fully fight in 2014

According to Rodion Miroshnik, the LPR and the DPR understood even then that they could only survive with Russian backing

MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/. The Donbass republics agreed to the Minsk accords because they could not fully confront Kiev militarily in 2014-2015, Rodion Miroshnik, head of the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) representation office in Moscow, said in an interview with TASS.

"This (decision to sign the Minsk agreements - TASS commentary) to a certain extent was common sense. Donbass militarily was not able to take on Kiev. We did not have our own army, we did not even have military units on the territory of Donbass. <...> So in 2014 we fought back with Berdan rifles and a T-34 tank taken off a pedestal. And they (the Kiev regime - TASS) had an army. Whether it was bad or good, doesn’t matter, but that was that. There were special units, a national guard and so on," he said.

According to Miroshnik, the LPR and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) understood even then that they could only survive with Russian backing.

"The Minsk agreements are agreements by key players. And we had to agree with them. That is, not fleshing anything out, but to agree. Because when they started bombing us, they started killing us, we had already lived through the air raid on Lugansk, Ilovaysk, and the blockade of Lugansk. We certainly had no desire to live with these people in the same country," he stressed.