RESPECTFULLY, I AGREE MINSK I and MINSK II WERE SIGNED INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS. BUT REITERATE THAT THESE AGREEMENTS ACTUALLY DID NOT HAPPEN DUE TO FAILURE OF COMPLIANCE BY BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS AND RUSSIAN/PUTIN.
Minsk I and II became MERE attempts when Russia [PUTIN], Donetsk and Luhansk FAILED to implement agreements.
* NOTE your reference: 2nd para; Sentence 1;
“The agreement failed to stop fighting, and was thus followed with a revised and updated agreement.
** NOTE Minsk I WAS revised and updated to agreement, Minsk II, which was signed on 12 February 2015. However, “fighting ONLY subsided following the agreement’s signing, it never ended completely, and the agreement’s provisions were never fully implemented. Yet, the Normandy Format parties agreed that the Minsk II should remain the basis for any future resolution to the conflict.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
OSCE MONITORS from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were sent to Ukraine after a request by the Ukrainian government, and an agreement between all member states of the OSCE, including Russia.
THESE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) deployed on 6 April, and has remained in Ukraine to “contribute to reducing tensions and fostering peace, stability and security”.
Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko announced a fifteen-point plan for peace on 20 June. The plan called for a week-long ceasefire, starting on 20 June, for the separatists to vacate the buildings they’ve occupied, for decentralization of power from the central government in Kyiv, and for the protection of Russian-language rights. The full text of the fifteen points are as follows:
-Security guarantees for all the participants of
negotiations.
-Amnesty for those who laid down weapons and didn’t
commit serious crimes.
-Liberation of hostages.
-Establishment of a 10-kilometre (6+1⁄4 mi) long buffer
zone on the Ukrainian-Russian border. Withdrawal of
illegal armed formations.
-Secure corridor for the escape of Russian and Ukrainian
mercenaries.
-Disarmament.
-Establishment of units for joint patrolling in the
structure of the MIA.
-Liberation of illegally seized administrative premises
in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
-Restoration of functioning of local government.
-Restoration of central television and radio
broadcasting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
-Anti-war demonstration in St. Petersburg, 1 May 2014
-Decentralization of power (through the election of
executive committees, protection of Russian language;
draft amendments to the Constitution).
-Coordination of governors with representatives of the
Donbas before the elections
-Early local and parliamentary elections.
-Program of creating jobs in the region.
-Restoration of industrial objects and objects of social
infrastructure.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
OSCE monitors with the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine met with a representative of the Donetsk People’s Republic on 21 June to DISCUSS THE PEACE PLAN.
********* THEN, the OSCE-Special Monitoring Mission lost contact with four monitors in Donetsk Oblast on 26 May, and another four in Luhansk Oblast on 29 May.
BOTH GROUPS WERE HELD IN CAPTIVITY BY SEPARATISTS FOR A MONTH, UNTIL FREED ON JUNE 27th AND JUNE 28th.********
SOURCE: Latest from the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine based on information received until 22 June 2014”.
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. 23 June 2014.
AGAIN, the BREAKAWAY REPUBLIC representatives stated that the ‘REPUBLICS’ would REJECT the ceasefire. THE DONESK BREAKAWAY REPUBLIC representative said the primary demands of the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic were “withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Donbas”, and recognition of the Republic.
HOWEVER FOLLOWING THIS STATEMENT, after initial ‘peace talks’ between the separatists, Ukrainian and Russian officials, and the OSCE in Donetsk on 23 June, Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said that his forces WOULD HOLD to the ceasefire.
HOWEVER THEN soon after this COMMITMENT statement, SEPARATISTS in Sloviansk SHOT DOWN a Ukrainian Armed Forces Mi-8 helicopter, killing all those on board!!!
THE NEXT DAY, President Poroshenko of Ukraine issued a statement:
1- that the ceasefire had been violated by the insurgents at least thirty-five times.
2- President Poroshenko was considering ending the ceasefire BECAUSE ACTUALLY Borodai said “there has been no ceasefire”.
Despite this, Poroshenko extended the ceasefire by three days from its planned ending on 27 June.
*The ceasefire had little actual impact on clashes between government and separatist forces, with at least five government soldiers killed during the ceasefire.July, the peace plan HAD BEEN REJECTED.
Poroshenko ended ceasefire after a rocket attack that killed nineteen Ukrainian troops.”
IMPORTANTLY INFORMATION:
On 24 July, Russian army serviceman Andrej Balabanov asked for political asylum in Ukraine stating: “I finally took a decision not to take part in this war and sided with Ukraine. This is my protest against Russia’s political leaders”.
Balabanov stated officialy his unit had sent “military intelligence, GRU, experts and Chechens” into Ukraine to help the separatists. He further stated his unit had been “continuously brainwashed into believing they would be sent to Ukraine to save their Russian-speaking brothers”.
Also, one has to make a clear distinction between Poroshenko and Russia BOTH failing on Minsk 1 while Ukraine (under Zelenskyy) and the DPR were making significant progress on Minsk 2 before Russia threw its teddy out of its pram 12 months ago.
Which bits of Minsk 2 had seen no progress at all?
RESPECTFULLY, I AGREE MINSK I and MINSK II WERE SIGNED INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS. BUT REITERATE THAT THESE AGREEMENTS ACTUALLY DID NOT HAPPEN DUE TO FAILURE OF COMPLIANCE BY BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS AND RUSSIAN/PUTIN.
The Minsk I and Minsk II agreements most certainly did happen. They were just never implemented or complied with.
UMCRevMom@aol.com #32
-The Minsk-2 deal as a second attempt to force Ukraine to accept PUTIN’s “Transnistria” for the Donbas, a “peace enforcement” to push both occupied regions BACK into Ukraine as Russian-run enclaves to expand Russia’s control over the internal and external affairs of Ukraine.
Note that what I took exception to was an attempt to cast ceasefire agreements as acts of coercion. It was the war that was the act of coercion. That is the legalized killing of people and breaking of things until one side forces its will upon the other, or until the two sides reach an agreement to end the chaos and slaughter.
A ceasefire agreement is considered a voluntary agreement, much as a plea agreement in a criminal case. A ceasefire agreement entails the choice between agreeing to certain terms or continuing the war. The parties are free to choose to keep killing and destroying each other, or to choose to accept terms to end the killing and destruction. Ukraine voluntarily chose to enter into the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements and participated in drafting the terms before doing so.
With a voluntary plea agreement, an innocent defendant may be offered the choice of time served, or proceeding to trial and risking a sentence of years. He may choose to walk rather than take the risk. There is no obligation to take the deal, so it is considered voluntary. So with the ceasefire agreement. Nobody was obligated to sign it.
Absent links, your SOURCES are unidentified.
** NOTE Minsk I WAS revised and updated to agreement, Minsk II, which was signed on 12 February 2015.
MINSK II is not a revision of MINSK I. MINSK II is officially entitled, "Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements."
Also see:
https://horlogedelinconscient.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Minsk-2-Full-text-UNIAN.pdf
Minsk 2 agreement English translation full text as published by UNIANThis following text is the full English translation of the Minsk 2 agreement. It was published on the Ukrainian UNIAN info web site on the 12th of February
A List of measures to fulfill the Minsk Agreement
UNIAN is the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Independent Information Agency
U.S. House Resolution 945 of 25 February 2022 is encaptioned:
Condemning Members of the Russian Duma and Federation Council who voted to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk in flagrant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, international law, and Russia’s commitments under the 2015 Minsk agreement.
This was certainly an anti-Russia resolution. It continued:
RESOLUTIONCondemning Members of the Russian Duma and Federation Council who voted to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk in flagrant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, international law, and Russia’s commitments under the 2015 Minsk agreement.
Whereas, since Russia’s illegal invasion and subsequent annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, Russia has engineered the rise of new separatist movements in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, collectively known as the Donbas;
Whereas the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements, designed to end the war in the Donbas region, established a ceasefire and provided a "special status" for the Donbas region that would enable it to enjoy limited autonomy while under continued control of the government of Ukraine;
[...]
Even this anti-Russian resolution in Congress recognizes that the Minsk agreements established a ceasefire and provided a special status for Donbas that would enable it to enjoy limited autonomy.
While not a feature of American government, the presence of autonomous areas in Europe is quite common. Areas within a country may be self-governing for their internal domestic affairs.
See, for example, the autonomous region of Aosta, Italy.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/cultural-routes/-/autonomous-region-of-the-aosta-valley
Scotland has its own government and its own criminal justice system, separate and apart from the rest of the UK.
Back to Minsk II. It does not mention Russia. Nor does it mention sovereignty. It is open to interpretation and has apparently self-contradictory provisions.
The Minsk Conundrum: Western Policy and Russia’s War in Eastern Ukraine
[Excerpts, but the whole is worth a read]
Minsk-2 is not an easy document to grasp. The product of hasty drafting, it tries valiantly to paper over yawning differences between the Ukrainian and Russian positions. As a result, it contains contradictory provisions and sets out a convoluted sequence of actions. It also has a gaping hole: although signed by Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, the agreement does not mention Russia – an omission that Russia has used to shirk responsibility for implementation and maintain the fiction that it is a disinterested arbiter.[...]
The political sections of Minsk-2 are weighted heavily in Russia’s favour. In particular, the provisions on special status go way beyond the brief reference in Minsk-1. Exceptionally far-reaching in scope, they would be enshrined in a permanent law and an amended constitution. Putin homed in on this point at a press conference in Budapest on 17 February:
Perhaps not everyone has yet noticed, but this is extremely important – the Ukrainian side, the authorities in Kyiv, in fact, have agreed to implement a deep constitutional reform so as to satisfy requests for the self-dependence [samostoyaltelnost] – however it’s called: decentralization, autonomization, federalization – of certain regions of their country. This is the essential, deeper meaning of the decision taken by the authorities.53Russia was not finished. Surkov coordinated the drafting of extra demands (published on 13 May as proposals from the DNR/LNR). These would give the occupied regions even greater powers: responsibility for legal regulation of the Ukraine/Russia border; the right to conclude agreements with foreign states; their own charters (which would, for example, prevent the president of Ukraine from dismissing local executive organs); their own budgets to ensure ‘financial autonomy’; and rights to introduce states of emergency and hold elections and referendums. Lastly, Ukraine would write a neutrality clause into its constitution.54
Implementation of these measures would in effect destroy Ukraine as a sovereign country. The DNR and LNR would be reincorporated into Ukraine but as distinct political, economic and legal entities tied to Russia – thus introducing a constitutional Trojan Horse that would give the Kremlin a lasting presence in Ukraine’s political system and prevent the authorities in Kyiv from running the country as an integrated whole. Indeed, radical devolution to Donbas might well prompt other regions to press for similar powers, causing central authority to unravel and effectively balkanizing Ukraine.55
The implications for Ukrainian foreign policy would be far-reaching. A neutrality clause in the constitution would rule out NATO accession.56
[...]
Furthermore, special status as set out in Minsk-2 – let alone the even more extreme demands made by Russia in May 2015 – is simply unworkable. It far exceeds what most Ukrainians consider an acceptable price for peace, as polls repeatedly show.65 Any Ukrainian leader who even appeared open to these ideas would probably commit political suicide. When, on 31 August 2015, Poroshenko put to the Rada a draft permanent law amending the constitution, rioting in Kyiv led to the deaths of four law enforcement officers; this despite the fact that the draft did not refer to special status.66 Poroshenko’s successor, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who made ending the war central to his election campaign in 2019, has also had to tread carefully. He proposes folding a reintegrated Donbas into the nationwide decentralization programme launched in 2014.67 Under the terms of a draft law on decentralization submitted to the Rada in December 2019, however, the DNR and LNR would not receive anything like the powers listed in Minsk-2; nor would they gain constitutional ‘special status’.68 This is unacceptable to Russia.
Minsk-2 can therefore be read in quite different ways. Ukraine’s version puts the re-establishment of control in the east before a political settlement. Russia would evacuate its troops and return the border to Ukraine. Elections would be held according to OSCE/ODIHR standards. Donbas would be reintegrated in line with the national decentralization programme (with some extra powers) and subordinated afresh to the authorities in Kyiv. As a result, Ukraine would be restored as a sovereign state. Russia’s version of Minsk-2 reverses key elements of this sequencing. A finalized political settlement would come before Ukraine retakes control of Donbas: elections would be held in the DNR and LNR; and Kyiv would agree a comprehensive devolution of power to these regimes. This would entrench Russian-controlled statelets, breaking the back of the Ukrainian state, preventing the central authorities from running the country as an integrated unit and torpedoing its westward integration. Only then would Ukraine regain control over the border, although whether Russia would allow that is moot.69 In short, Minsk-2 supports mutually exclusive views of sovereignty: either Ukraine is sovereign (Ukraine’s interpretation), or it is not (Russia’s interpretation)70 – this is the ‘Minsk conundrum’.
The Minsk Agreements text may have left much to be desired, but they did happen, and Ukraine did agree to the terms of the agreements, even if the people of Ukraine found those terms unacceptable.
I rather doubt that just continuing the fighting has worked out well for anybody, Ukraine least of all.