President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that he himself refused to comply with the Minsk agreements. He spoke about this in an interview with a German publication. Der Spiegel.

According to the Ukrainian president, the Minsk agreements could not be signed in the form in which they were originally drafted. Zelensky also stressed that he expressed his objections in conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the Normandy summit.

“I told them: I returned from the front line, I visited all the villages on this front line. The Minsk agreements cannot be implemented.”Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president explained his decision not to comply with the Minsk agreements by the fact that the issue of Crimea was not spelled out in the document. At the same time, the Europeans assured Zelensky that this topic would be raised, but later.

In December, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an interview with Die Zeit, expressed the opinion that the Minsk agreements reached in the Normandy format were an attempt to give Kyiv time. Ukraine, according to Merkel, used it to prepare for a confrontation with Russia. In response, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande confirmed that the Minsk agreements were a front for them. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that the Kiev regime nullified the Minsk agreements.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that the purpose of disrupting the Minsk agreements was to prepare Ukraine for a hybrid war, as well as to destroy the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population of the country.