Sixteen hours. That is how long Angela Merkel and François Hollande sat with Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin in Minsk before the Minsk-2 deal came out in February 2015. Within days, Debaltseve, a transport hub between Donetsk and Luhansk, had fallen to Russian-backed forces.
The catch is that the agreement was built to stop a battle that was still being fought while the ink dried.
Two deals, one war
There were two Minsk documents. The first, the Minsk Protocol, dates to September 5, 2014. Kurt Volker, writing for the Center for European Policy Analysis, describes it as mainly a pledge to stop shooting where the lines already ran, a pledge Russia never honoured. By early 2015 the fighting was intense enough to force the second round. Separatists had launched an offensive that threatened to encircle Debaltseve, and Merkel and Hollande shuttled to Kyiv and then Moscow on short notice, and on to Minsk. The result was signed on February 12, 2015, and contained 13 terms.
Volker stresses that the two texts are cumulative. The second does not replace the first. Both rest on a ceasefire starting at once, with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe watching everything, border included.
Who signed, and who did not
Much of the later argument turns on a technicality. Volker says the original signatories were Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE. The leaders of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics added their names only after the other three had signed, and in his account Ukraine would not have signed otherwise. Yet Moscow insists it only played the role of go-between, and that the real deal was struck between Kyiv and the separatists. Volker calls that untrue and describes the separatist forces as Russian supplied and directed.
On his reading, the obligations are not ambiguous. Guns fall silent, foreign forces leave, illegal armed groups are disbanded, and Kyiv regains the stretch of the Russian border on the Ukrainian side, with the OSCE supervising throughout. He says Russia did none of it. He also notes why the text still mattered in 2021: it was the latest formal document bearing Russia’s signature that affirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and Russia’s failure to implement it was what justified keeping EU sanctions in force.
Each side read it differently
Russia chalked Minsk-2 up as a diplomatic win, DW reported in 2020. Ukrainians were warier. They feared the deal would hand separatists far-reaching autonomy and tighter ties with Russia, leaving Kyiv with no voice in the Donbass but with the bill. Poroshenko was unwilling to make political concessions without a proper ceasefire. So the deal was never fully put into effect.
His successor Volodymyr Zelenskiy tried to restart it. In 2019 there was a gradual troop pullback at three locations and two prisoner swaps, one in September involving Russia and one in December with the two separatist entities. Kyiv accepted the 2015 Steinmeier formula, which would let Donetsk and Luhansk gradually acquire special status, and the concession set off street protests across Ukraine. In early December 2019 the four governments met again, in Paris, and set new targets, including a ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners by the end of the year.
By February 2020 trench fighting still flared along the old front line, largely unnoticed abroad. A “Minsk-3” looked unlikely. Russia had no interest in Kyiv’s new demand to regain control of its 400-kilometer eastern border, and Zelenskiy said he would only then accept local elections in the separatist-held areas, possibly in autumn 2020.
Sources
- Don't Let Russia Fool You About the Minsk Agreements (CEPA)
- Ukraine conflict: Can the Minsk-2 peace deal be saved? (DW)
