The people of Ukraine have the right to demand responsibility for deception, said Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Alexei Shevtsov.
MOSCOW, February 12. /tass/. Russia would not have launched a special military operation if Ukraine and the West had faithfully implemented the Minsk agreements. Alexey Shevtsov, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, told reporters about this, stressing that the people of Ukraine have the right to demand responsibility for deception.
"If Minsk and Minsk-2 had been honestly executed by Ukraine and the West, there would have been no need to launch a special military operation," said the Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council.
"I think the people living on the territory of modern Ukraine have every right to demand that the Kiev authorities and their Western masters answer for this criminal deception, which has already led to the flight of the population abroad and the loss of a significant part of the territory," Shevtsov said. Thus, he answered the question of TASS whether Russia would have to start its own if the Minsk agreements were being implemented.
"History does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, but over time it becomes possible to look at events from a different angle, to reveal the true motives and intentions of participants in certain historical processes," said the Deputy Secretary of the Security Council. On the day of the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Package of Measures for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements (Minsk-2), he recalled how the events unfolded and what consequences they led to.
A banal deception
"The conditions of Minsk-2 were more than acceptable for Ukraine - Donbass would remain part of its territory, it would be possible to launch a process of national reconciliation and build a state that would protect the interests and rights of its citizens, rather than sacrifice them in favor of Western neo-colonial aspirations," Shevtsov said.
According to him, "the problem was that only Russia acted bona fide in Minsk, with a clear intention and willingness to faithfully fulfill its obligations." "Apart from Russia, none of the participants and guarantors of Minsk-2 intended to comply with the agreements. This was confirmed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande, who admitted that their main goal was to give the Kiev authorities time to accumulate forces and pump up weapons," stated the Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin bluntly said that we were tricked then. At the same time, Ukraine, France and Germany ignored not only the package of measures itself, but also the mandatory UN Security Council resolution that approved it," Shevtsov said.
He drew attention to the fact that "as a result, the implementation of the Minsk agreements was sabotaged by the Ukrainian side with the full support of the German and French "guarantors" and the open connivance of the OSCE." Russian Russian Orthodox Church officials said: "While the work in the relevant subgroups on the settlement was bogged down in minutiae and details, gross and massive violations of the rights of Russian people were committed, including bans on the use of the Russian language, seizures of churches of the canonical UOC and persecution of clergy were carried out, a totalitarian state was being built," Shevtsov cited examples.
He also recalled that "in the spring of 2022 in Istanbul, when Russia again tried to reach an agreement, Ukrainian representatives initialed the draft documents, but after consultations with the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, they withdrew their signatures."
