Claim: The Eastern provinces of Ukraine are separatists
The Minsk Agreements, which Putin has repeatedly insisted should be instated, say otherwise.
DONETSK AND LUHANSK WERE NOT SEPARATISTS, BUT SIMPLY WANTED AUTONOMY WITHIN UKRAINE
The Minsk Agreements, which until February 2022 Putin had repeatedly requested be instated, are all about the Russian speaking Eastern provinces of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, having autonomy within Ukraine, not about them seeking independence from Ukraine. Accordingly, the Eastern Provinces are not separatists at all.
Furthermore in 2014 a referendum in Donestk and Luhansk asked whether voters wanted self-determination, outright independence, or to join Russia.
89% wanted more self-determination - not outright independence.
The vote infuriated the Ukrainian government. The Foreign Ministry called it a “criminal farce arranged by a gang of Russian terrorists,” and blamed Russian agents for infiltrating Eastern Ukraine and affecting the vote. Yet, if the vote had been rigged, why didn’t they rig it so that the vote came out favouring union with Russia?
THE MINSK AGREEMENTS
MAIDAN REVOLUTION - OUTLAWED RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
The Ukrainian government was overthrown in the Maidan Revolution of 2014.
One of the first acts of the new government was to repeal the 2012 language laws giving rights to Russian speakers and other minorities living in Ukrainian provinces to conduct their legal and official business, and education, in their own language. The 2012 language law was very unpopular with Ukrainian speakers in Kiev, because (rather ironically) they felt it would divide Ukrainians.
In the provinces in the East of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, where most of the Russian speaking Ukrainians lived, a conflict broke out. Some Russian speaking units in the Ukrainian army defected to the Ukrainian side, meaning the Eastern provinces had arms, and fighting broke out.
MILITIAS AND THE AZOV BATTALIAN
Not having enough troops, the Ukrainian government turned to civilian militias for help, such as Azov Battalion. These militias were not the official army of the Ukraine in the early stages, however somewhere along the way they have become official. The idea that they are Nazis, or white supremacists, is not a conspiracy theory. It is true - see my article detailing the evidence. The OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation) have documents detailing the atrocities committed by these militias and were monitoring them until March 2022, when they could no longer reach a consensus as to whether these were atrocities any more.
MINSK AGREEMENTS
In the Western Media, the Russian provinces in the East of Ukraine have been labelled as “Separatists”, as if they wanted to leave Ukraine and become part of Russia.
Yet under the Minsk Agreements they had agreed to become autonomous provinces under the government of Ukraine.
CIVIL WAR BEGINS 2014
A full scale civil war raged throughout the Donbass region from May 2014 and February of 2015, killing 13,000 people and injuring many more, and causing people to flee. Many fled to Russia.
MINSK AGREEMENTS OFFERED HOPE
There were two Minsk agreements, one was signed in 2014, the other in 2015. Both were negotiated with the help of the UN security Council and aimed to keep the Russian Speaking Eastern Provinces of Ukraine in the Ukraine.
The Minsk agreements agreed on a ceasefire, which did not happen because of continued violence on both sides.
Neither Minsk agreement insisted on these regions becoming separate from the Ukraine, but required that the Ukrainian government reform the constitution to allow the Eastern provinces to be able to hold local elections and have a degree of autonomy.
RUSSIA HAS BEEN PUSHING THE MINSK AGREEMENTS SINCE THEIR INCEPTION
What is very interesting is how hard Russia has been pushing the Minsk agreement since 2015.
In February 2017, NATO begin building up troops on the Russian border.
On 31 October 2017 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov met and discussed the “need to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and fully implement the Minsk agreements.”
In November and December of 2017 Anatoly Antonov reiterated the Russian commitment to the Minsk agreement in a speech at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco and in December at Stanford.
In July 2018 Putin met Trump and reiterated his commitment to the Minsk agreement. Putin was accused by the media of sending troops across the border to buttress the 'separatists' but he denied it, and I can find no evidence that he was doing this. Perhaps he was, who knows?
On September 4 2018 when the prime minister of Donetsk and leader of the resistance in Donetsk, Alexander Zakharchenko, who was one of the signatories of the Minsk agreement, was killed in a bombing, Russia’s approach to the issue of Ukraine changed quite markedly. Russia accused Ukraine’s government of bombing the café where Zakharchenko was sitting with his bodyguard having a coffee; the Ukrainians blamed ‘internal tensions’ in Donetsk - a statement that certainly seems to place the blame at the foot of one of the militias, probably the Azov battalion. Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov withdrew from talks with Germany and France that were aimed at reviving the Minsk agreement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "This is no doubt a provocation. Zakharchenko's death will certainly lead to increased tensions in the region" and that it would undermine conditions for the start of the Minsk agreements.
The murder of Zakharchenko was perhaps as foolish as poking a bear. After this, in September of 2018 Russia held its largest military exercise ever on the border of Ukraine, the Vostok 2018 military exercise. Ukraine asserted there was a huge military buildup of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border, but Russia did not invade.
Russia acted even more aggressively on 25th November 2018, when, in the Kerch Strait, three Ukrainian military vessels were challenged by the FSB coast guard - the Ukrainians claimed they hailed the Russians but the Russians didn’t answer - the Russians say the Ukrainians did not respond to their hails. The Ukrainian vessels were seized and the Navy crewmembers and members of the Ukrainian SBU security service on board the vessels were imprisoned by the Russians.
Even then, Putin did not, however, move to a full scale invasion. I believe he was holding out hope that the Minsk agreements might lead to peace in Eastern Ukraine.
In April of 2019, as the new President of Ukraine, Zelensky, was being installed, Putin began granting Russian passports to inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine, a move that was seen as provocative by Western Media. Putin claimed that neither the outgoing President, Poroshenko, nor the incoming President Zelensky, actually wanted implement the Minsk accord. If Zelensky did, however, Putin said Russia was willing to “help them with that. If Kiev implements the Minsk accord, we will seek a normalisation of the situation.”
In late 2019, Putin was still insisting that the Minsk agreement had to be implemented in the “Normandy Format” meeting in Paris in September with Zelensky, Macron, Merkel at the Palace Élysée.
Putin said: “Mr. Zelensky and I have different positions on this issue. Our position is very simple: we stand for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. The Minsk Agreements say – you can read it for yourself – that Ukraine will be able to start restoring control over that territory, over that section of the border on day one after the local elections. This is what it says. And this process should end after the completion of a comprehensive political settlement. This is what the text of the agreement says. Why should the Minsk Agreements be reopened and revised? All the measures set out in that package are interconnected. If we revise one of them, this will lead to the revision of others and we will lose the agreements and create a situation where nothing can be done. This is our logic, and I believe that it is justified.” and regarding the language issue, “We do want Russian speakers throughout Ukraine, not only in Donbass, to have equal democratic rights.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to another ceasefire in the war in the Eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass, “by the end of 2019”.
On the 20th November 2019, the Russian Embassy in the US stated that Russia is hoping that the US will pressure Ukraine to fulfil its obligations under the Minsk agreement.
There seemed to be hope then, of a ceasefire.
But in July of 2020, Putin accused Ukraine of reneging on the settlement process, because the planned election in November 2020 excluded the Eastern provinces of Ukraine.
In August of 2020, Zelensky seemed to renege on the ceasefire, saying, “We have an alternative plan for what can be done. But there is no really effective plan that would be supported by all four countries of the Normandy Format. On the other hand, there is still time so I want to move forward. And if it doesn’t work, then we will think about other options.”
During 2020, ceasefires came and went, one was declared in July 2020, it soon fell apart, another in December.
IN 1991 GORBACHEV WAS REASSURED THAT NATO DID NOT WANT TO EXPAND - BUT NOW NATO WANTS UKRAINE TO JOIN.
The Russian wargames on the Ukrainian border continued and the tensions increased greatly when, despite a “cascade of assurances made to Gorbachev” from February 1990 to 1991 that the expansion of NATO was not the West’s intention in the breakup of the Eastern bloc (see the National Security Archive declassified documents), NATO held a Summit on the 14 June 2021 in Brussels and declared that Ukraine would be joining NATO:
We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as an integral part of the process; we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions, including that each partner will be judged on its own merits. We stand firm in our support for Ukraine’s right to decide its own future and foreign policy course free from outside interference. … We will also continue to support Ukraine’s efforts to strengthen its resilience against hybrid threats, including through intensifying activities under the NATO-Ukraine Platform on Countering Hybrid Warfare. We welcome the cooperation between NATO and Ukraine with regard to security in the Black Sea region. …We highly value Ukraine’s significant contributions to Allied operations, the NATO Response Force, and NATO exercises.
JENS STOLTENBERG’S ASSURANCE THAT NATO WANTS UKRAINE RUINS CHRISTMAS DAY
I believe it is hard to underestimate the shocking effect of this news in Russia, on the Russian people; it was seen as a great threat. Putin was expressing concerns about NATO expansion all through the second half of 2021. The thought of NATO missile defense systems on the border of Ukraine with Russia was deeply disturbing to Russia. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s comments on Ukraine’s possible membership of NATO in early January, “We will not compromise on core principles, including the right for every nation to decide its own path, including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be a part of,” which were reported on January 7th and although I cannot find the reference to this, commentary about this apparently filled the television news on January 7th, the Russian Christmas Day, rather than anything about Christmas in Russia, even though Russia is actually very much a religious country.
There was no coverage in the Western media of any of this.
Perhaps that is partly why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as such a surprise to many in the West.
In response to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s complaints about Russian buildup on the Ukrainian border, Russia offered a plan to NATO that involved NATO agreeing to halt all membership plans with Ukraine and anywhere else close to the Russian border, and end military exercises on the border with Russia. In exchange, Russia would end the wargames, aircraft buzzing incidents and other low-level hostilities.
Considering that Russia was simply asking NATO not to do what NATO was asking Russia not to do, wargames and expansion plans, it does not seem such an unreasonable request.
NATO rejected the plan completely.
By January of 2022, the Ukrainian war with the eastern provinces was no longer conducted by proxy through the militias, but had become a full scale war again. The massive increase of the shelling of Donbass by the Ukrainians on February 16th alerted the Russians that a full scale military operation was imminent, and that was what spurred the Russians to recognise the independence of the Republics.
UN Charter Article 51 allows an invasion under certain circumstances.
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.” UN Charter Article 51
END OF THE MINSK AGREEMENT… AND WAR BEGINS.
On February 21 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised the independence of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
During a press conference on February 23, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Minsk agreement no longer exists, and that Ukraine must demilitarise and that they should no longer seek NATO membership. This was Putin’s final warning.
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/358138-tillerson-meets-with-russian-ambassador/
https://ru.usembassy.gov/secretary-tillersons-meeting-ambassador-antonov/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46338671
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-military-buildup.html
https://www.france24.com/en/20180720-trump-summit-putin-made-concrete-ukraine-offer-envoy
https://news.yahoo.com/kremlin-warns-ukraine-rebels-murder-could-derail-peace-000406276.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/25/russia-provoking-ukraine-with-passport-move.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10379677/NATO-warns-real-risk-Russian-invasion-Ukraine.html
https://www.rt.com/russia/545829-military-exercises-ukrainian-border/
https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-expansion-russia-mislead/31263602.html
https://sputniknews.com/20220221/russia-recognises-donbass-republics-independence-1093241178.html
This article prompted much of this research:
AN INTERESTING TANGENT: DEEP FAKE VIDEOS
IMPORTANT - THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE SHOWING THAT GORBACHEV WAS REPEATEDLY REASSURED THAT NATO WAS NOT EXPANDING EASTWARDS.
SKIRTING THE EDGE OF MISINFORMATION HALL OF NEAR INFAMY
UNCORRECTED FACT CHECK HALL OF INFAMY
There is so much Western media at the moment that deserves to go in here. But this one takes the cake.