In his recent memoir, the Secretary General of NATO from 2014 to 2024, Jens Stoltenberg, recounts negotiating the Minsk Accords in 2015, a peace deal to end the war in Eastern Ukraine that broke out after the 2014 coup between the new Western-backed government and Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine.
Stoltenberg writes:
An agreement to bring an end to the war in the Donbas was negotiated in the Belorussian capital Minsk in February, seven months before my trip to Ukraine. It was signed by Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and representatives for the pro-Russian separatists. The agreement contained provisions regarding a ceasefire, the withdrawal of all heavy weapons, and the exchange of prisoners; a political dialogue would be entered into, and elections would be held. Ukraine’s constitution would also be changed to give Luhansk and Donetsk greater political autonomy, although precisely what this would entail was not defined.
Following this agreement, Stoltenberg recounts meeting with then Ukranian president Petro Poroshenko, and asking him, “‘What’s the alternative to the Minsk agreement?’” to which he replied, “More war”.
Stoltenberg then admits that Ukraine’s Western-backed far-right, which got into positions of power after the coup of 2014, prevented Poroshenko from giving more autonomy to Luhansk and Donetsk- a key tenet of the Minsk Accords, writing:
he was under pressure from a nationalist-oriented parliament, which wanted central control and a strong presidential office. Poroshenko had pushed through an amendment to the constitution, which paved the way for decentralisation and increased autonomy for Luhansk and Donetsk, but the changes had not yet been implemented. He faced significant opposition; the amendment was regarded as an expression of weakness and capitulation to the Russians and the separatists.
Stoltenberg admits that this later happened again in 2019, when Volodymyr Zelensky, who at the time ran and was elected on a platform of fully honoring the Minsk agreements, was similarly blocked from honoring them. Stoltenberg writes:
Zelenskyy was in favour of holding elections in Eastern Ukraine and giving the region separate status; he had not insisted that the Ukrainians must first have control of the entire Donbas region before such elections could be held. The opposition in Kyiv, however, mercilessly struck this down, because they believed it an expression of weakness.
What Stoltenberg did not mention in the book was the open threats of violence the far-right in Ukraine used to stop the Minsk Accords from being implemented, and the backing they got from the West in doing so.
In 2019, the NGO Finnish Peace Defenders reported :
While President Zelensky is trying to follow commitments given to his electorate and international obligations in implementation of the Minsk Agreements, he has to overcome obstacles placed by irregular armed groups who identify themselves as patriots of Ukraine.
On October 7, the Ukrainian Army should have withdrawn from the settlements at the frontline, Zolote and nearby Katerynivka, in the Luhansk Region. The 72nd Mechanized Brigade, which is currently deployed to the area, should have received the order in the morning that day. The same should have been done by the units of the opposing side controlling part of the villages. The OSCE SMM should have overseen the pullback.
It didn’t happen, due to the open threats and blackmail by far-right military circles in Ukraine, including the National Corps led by Andrii Biletski.
The President of Ukraine (Zelensky) went to a frontline in Donbas to personally convince far-right military formation members, reportedly from the neo-Nazi-led Azov regiment, to stop blocking implementation of the Minsk agreement to withdraw troops along with the militants of the self-proclaimed entities.
Andrii Biletsky is reported to continue threatening the president with thousands of volunteers engaged in “defending the last checkpoint” of Zolote if the president goes on with the disengagement plan.
The Far Right to this day makes open threats towards the Ukrainian government against agreeing to any peace negotiations.
In a recent interview with The Times of London, Serhii Sternenko, an official with Right Sector- another Ukrainian far-right paramilitary group- said, “If [President] Zelensky were to give any unconquered land away, he would be a corpse — politically, and then for real”.
What Stoltenberg also glosses over is the fact that the West has backed the Ukrainian far-right in their threats against the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
In his recent book, “The Russia-Ukraine War: Its Nature, Origins, and Outcome”, Ukrainian Canadian political scientist Ivan Katchanovski documented that, “The Western governments and foundations, such as Soros foundation, funded all but one of about two dozen Ukrainian NGOs, which initially issued in 2019 a collective statement that any talks with Donbas separatists were impermissible after the head of the Zelenskyy’s presidential administration supported creation of a consulting group with representatives of the separatist-controlled Donbas during the Minsk negotiations”.
While glossing over the open threats and backing from Western-funded NGOs, Stoltenberg nonetheless admits that Ukraine’s far-right prevented the full implementation of the Minsk Accords because they viewed them as “an expression of weakness”.
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The triumph of the bureaucracy of NATO. They required Russia to continue to play the role of the Soviet Union, so they made it so.
I wonder who has promoted the Nazis pursuing this policy?
Perhaps the same people behind the promotion of the Zionists pursuing their policies?
“We bring fresh Orcs to life”