Russia Ukraine war, page-167452

Indeed, Putin ordered the Special Military Operation (Invasion) to commence. Zelensky took credit for derailing it.

“As for Minsk as a whole, I told Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel: we will not be able to implement it like that,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Spiegel published on Thursday.

According to Zelensky, he said the same thing to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the first and last meeting with him in the Normandy format in 2019.“I told him the same thing as the other two. They were surprised and replied: ‘If we knew in advance that you would change the meaning of our meeting, then there would be problems even before the summit,'” Zelenskyy added.

The Ukrainian president said Kiev used the agreement only for the exchange of prisoners of war.Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was in office from 2005 to 2021 said in an interview published in early December that the Minsk accords were signed to “give Ukraine time” to strengthen itself.Merkel said “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine.”