Both sides agree there’s not going to be a Minsk 3 agreement. From Ted Snider at responsiblestatecraft.com:
In recent weeks, leaders in both Kyiv and Moscow have argued that the Minsk agreements are no longer worth the paper they’re printed on.
The animosity between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been bitter. Agreement on anything — which would be a starting point for talks — is elusive. For the first time in several months, however, the two leaders have agreed on something. Unfortunately it takes them even farther away from talks than they are today.
They both seem to believe that the Minsk II agreement, a 2015 deal that many believed would be a way forward to peace in the region, is dead.
At some point this horrifying war will end. And it will have to end with talks. Those talks will have to, at some point, settle the issue of the eastern lands caught in a decades-long tug of war. Zelensky has said that a precondition for talks is “restoration of [Ukraine’s] territorial integrity,” meaning the Donbas, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and even Crimea. Russia has said that negotiations can only be held on the basis of existing geopolitical realities and maintains that any negotiated settlement must respect Russia’s annexation of these same regions. That is the principal roadblock to a settlement. A big one.
That roadblock has been solidified and reinforced, not dissipated or lessened, by a recent agreement in statements made by the two leaders.
On November 15, addressing the G20 summit in Bali by video link, Zelensky rejected any return to the Minsk agreement. “We will not allow Russia to wait, build up its forces, and then start a new series of terror and global destabilisation. There will be no Minsk 3, which Russia will violate immediately after the agreement,” he insisted.
The West never took the Minsk agreement seriously and used it as a means to arm Ukraine for a war against its Russian-speaking citizens. Why would Putin or any other Russian believe the West if it came out with another fraudulent plan?
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is there anyone left who believes anything the u. s. govt says, or puts in writing? i suppose there are a few fools remaining.
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