As of: February 16, 2024, 7:56 p.m
By: Bettina Menzel
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Russian President Vladimir Putin.
© Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool AP/dpa
In his most recent interview, the Russian president echoed unsubstantiated allegations against the West.
But Putin also revealed what he regrets about the Ukraine war.
Moscow – Russia attacked its sovereign neighboring country Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The war in Ukraine has already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
According to the US Department of Defense, at least 315,000 of them were Russian soldiers.
In an interview in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said what he regretted about the invasion - apparently it was not the death of his compatriots.
According to Putin, this is what he regrets about the war in Ukraine
Russia should have started invading Ukraine earlier, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin that appeared on the Kremlin's Telegram channel on Wednesday (February 14).
“The only thing we can regret is that we did not start our active actions earlier because we believed we were dealing with decent people,” the Russian news agency Tass quoted the Kremlin chief verbatim.
In the first phase, he tried to resolve the conflict in Donbass “through peaceful means, namely the Minsk Agreement,” the Russian president further claimed.
He was referring to the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, which violated international law, and the subsequent Minsk Agreement.
In the past, the Kremlin chief had accused the West of not adhering to the agreement.
Russia broke the Minsk Agreement a few days after it was signed
The Minsk Agreement was negotiated between Ukraine and Russia under German-French mediation and signed in 2015.
The goal: The agreement was intended to end the separatist war in eastern Ukraine.
Just a few days after the signing, pro-Russian separatists attacked the strategically important Ukrainian city of Debaltseve and took it shortly afterwards.
Since then, Minsk II has been repeatedly broken and most of its commitments have never been implemented.
Moscow and Kiev blame each other for this.
On February 21, 2022, Putin announced that he no longer saw any chance of implementing the Minsk Agreement.
He then declared the internationally unrecognized People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk independent and shortly afterwards invaded Ukraine.
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Putin makes these accusations against former Chancellor Angela Merkel
In Wednesday's interview, Putin also made allegations against former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Both the former German chancellor and the former French president openly admitted in public that they never intended to fulfill the agreements,” the Kremlin chief claimed.
Instead, Western leaders just wanted to buy time to deliver more weapons to the Kiev regime, "and that's exactly what they did," Putin continued.
In fact, Merkel had never made such a statement.
However, Moscow thoroughly reinterpreted another statement made by the former Chancellor.
In an interview with Die
Zeit
in 2022, the politician said that the Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time.
“She also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today,” said Merkel.
The aim of the agreement was, among other things, to give Ukraine time through a ceasefire in order to later achieve peace between Kiev and Moscow.
Minsk Agreement, Budapest Momorandum, UN Charter: “Putin has kicked all three into the trash”
The West “talked about peace while preparing for an attack.
And now he admits it without hesitation,” the Kremlin chief reinterpreted the statement according to Russian propaganda in his New Year’s speech on 22/23.
As has become clear from numerous examples, Putin is trying to rewrite the past in his favor.
In doing so, the Kremlin boss is using history as a weapon – and ignoring international law.
The head of the Munich Security Conference, Christoph Heusgen, recently said that he believes it is unjustified that the Minsk Agreement has a bad reputation.
It is as good or bad as the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which Russia guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, among others, or the United Nations Charter.
“Putin kicked all three into the trash, but that doesn’t make them bad.
Putin is bad because he doesn’t abide by international law.”