I'm posting this as further backing to statements I made in the past about the treachery the US and NATO has been engaging in since the early 90s WRT Russia. Also, why that didn't really leave Russia/Putin any intelligent choices but military ones and setting up the Donbas (which was overwhelmingly ethnic RUSSIAN - not Ukrainian - to begin with) as a legitimate buffer, as it had been historically for hundreds of years.
Also, I called the Ukraine events the start of WW3 (or WW4, depending on how you count). Once diplomacy is found to be completely disingenuous, the cheated party has limited choices.
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Original Interviews
Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-year-with-ex-chancellor-merkel-you-re-done-with-power-politics-a-f46149cb-6deb-45a8-887c-8aa37cc9b3c3
Die Zelt: http://archive.ph/OY5cG
Article on the Articles and What it Means:
http://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/merkels-confession-duplicity-minsk-accords-cold-war-20-just-got-colder
"As has been widely reported and excellently analyzed — except in the mainstream American press, where Merkel’s remarks last week go unmentioned — the former German leader described her cynical, treacherous betrayal of Moscow during negotiations of the two Minsk Protocols, the first signed in September 2014 and the second the following February.
Berlin, Paris, the post-coup Kiev regime and Moscow were signatories to those accords. How well I recall the earnestness with which Russian President Vladimir Putin entered into the talks. How hopeful many of us were that, with Kiev having swiftly breached Minsk I, the second accord would produce what the Russian president sought — a lasting settlement that would leave Ukraine united and stabilize the security order on Russia’s southwestern border and Europe’s eastern flank.
Earlier this year Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s first post-coup president, shocked everybody when he stated publicly that Kiev never had any intention of honoring the commitments it made when it signed the Minsk Protocols: The talks in the Belarusian capital and all the promises were meant simply to buy time while Ukraine built fortifications in the eastern regions and trained and armed a military strong enough to wage a full-dress war of aggression against the Russian-tilted Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
There was never any interest in the federal structure envisioned in Minsk II. There was never any intention of granting the breakaway regions the measure of autonomy Ukraine’s history and its mixed languages, cultures and traditions called for. Committing to all that was a ruse intended to deceive Moscow and the Donbass republics while Ukraine rearmed and shelled the latter in anticipation of the war that broke out in February."
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Der Spiegel:
“She believes that… later during the Minsk talks, she was able to buy the time Ukraine needed to better fend off the Russian attack. She says it is now a strong, well-fortified country. Back then, she is certain, it would have been overrun by Putin’s troops.”
In Die Zeit, the second of the two interviews, Merkel described the Minsk talks as “an attempt to give Ukraine time… to become stronger,” later expressing satisfaction that this strategy — a straight-out abuse of the diplomatic process — has succeeded.
Merkel reveals the Minsk Agreement was a stalling tactic that allowed the West to militarize Ukraine as an anti-Russian proxy and fortify it for an inevitable war. I'm struggling to find any coverage or analysis of this remarkable confession in English language mainstream media. https://t.co/5oeSvcQinl
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 8, 2022
There are various interpretations of Merkel’s remarks. They are generally taken at face value, as an offhandedly delivered admission of her duplicity — and by extension the West’s — in her dealings with Russia on the Ukraine question. Moon of Alabama, a German publication, reads the interviews as Merkel’s attempt to protect her political reputation as Germany’s leadership circles succumb to the kind of Russophobia common in the U.S. but not, heretofore, in the Federal Republic.
I find both of these readings plausible. Either way, the important topic now before us is the damage Merkel did in 2014 and 2015 and the consequences of her comments last week.
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