I'm sick to death hearing that blatant lie.
https://cepa.org/article/dont-let-russia-fool-you-about-the-minsk-agreements/
Since some of you won't open the link, here are some excerpts:
"4. Russia is in violation of the Minsk Agreements. The deals require a ceasefire, withdrawal of foreign military forces, disbanding of illegal armed groups, and returning control of the Ukrainian side of the international border with Russia to Ukraine, all of this under OSCE supervision. Russia has done none of this. It has regular military officers as well as intelligence operatives and unmarked “little green men” woven into the military forces in Eastern Ukraine. The LPR and DPR forces are by any definition “illegal armed groups,” that have not been disbanded. The ceasefire has barely been respected by the Russian side for more than a few days at a time."
"5. Russian-led forces prevent the OSCE from accomplishing its mission in Donbas as spelled out in the Minsk Agreements. It is an unstated irony in Vienna — understood by every single diplomatic mission and member of the international staff — that Russia approves the mandate of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine when it votes in Vienna, but then blocks implementation of that same mission on the ground in Ukraine. Because Russia is a member of the OSCE, and the SMM wants to preserve what little access it has to the occupied territories, the mission is guarded in what it says about ceasefire violations and restrictions on its freedom of movement. Privately, however, they acknowledge that some 80% of such violations and restrictions come from the Russian-controlled side of the border, and those that occur on the Ukrainian side are largely for safety reasons (e.g., avoiding mined approaches to bridges.)"
Yup, Russia's position was that it didn't have to comply since it wasn't a part of the conflict. Unbelievable
Zakharova noted that the Minsk Package of Measures made no mention of any obligations by Russia, but specified the parties to the conflict, which are the Ukrainian authorities and Ukraine’s armed forces on the one hand and the representatives of certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and their militias on the other, do have such obligations. Sept 6, 2021
Merkel is on record stating that the Minsk agreements were created by the EU and West to buy time in arming up Ukraine for a war with Russia.
Preplanned, premeditated war.