
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Minsk agreements concluded in 2015 could not contribute to the settlement of the armed conflict in Donbass and were a concession to Russia.
In an interview with the French edition of Le Figaro, Zelensky said that the agreements concluded in Minsk did not mention the issue of Crimea in any way. According to the Ukrainian president, when he tried to raise the issue of Crimea in a conversation with European partners, they replied that this issue was inappropriate and untimely. Zelensky was never given the opportunity to talk about Crimea during the Normandy talks, adding that he believes this was a deliberate mistake that no one was looking to correct.
According to Zelensky, he repeatedly raised this issue during conversations with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Emmanuel Macron and tried to convince them of the impossibility of implementing the Minsk agreements in their current form.
Earlier, Merkel and Macron said that the Minsk agreements were nothing more than a ploy designed to give Ukraine time to strengthen its army. Since their signing, the Ukrainian side has not taken a single step towards the implementation of these agreements.
The Minsk agreements were concluded in 2015. The parties to the agreements were Ukraine and the then unrecognized republics of Donbass. Germany, France (on the part of Ukraine) and Russia (on the part of the LPR and DPR) acted as guarantors of their observance.