Former French President François Hollande, who was alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel when the Minsk agreements were negotiated in 2014-2015, confirmed her Dec. 7 admission that they were designed to “buy time” for the Kiev regime. Hollande made his remarks in an interview with Theo Prouvost, the French correspondent for the Kyiv Independent, which was published on Dec. 28. The interview itself is a fairy tale from beginning to end in which both Hollande and Prouvost fantasize about Russian “aggression” which began in Crimea in 2014 and in which the Germans and the French had to intervene in some way to try to stop.
“A break occurred with the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin in 2012. He dreamt of a re-creation of the Soviet Union. Putin adopted an aggressive posture and waited to see what the West’s reaction would be,” Hollande claimed. “He was provocative and aggressive. The main adversary was (now) named the United States.”
Putin’s objective at the Feb. 11, 2015 marathon talks in Minsk, Hollande claimed further, “was to postpone the ceasefire as late as possible to obtain the greatest possible territorial gains. He also wanted more ‘autonomy’ for the (so-called) Russian-speaking regions, which in his mind, he could one day prepare for annexation.”
Prouvost then quoted Merkel in her Dec. 7 Die Zeit interview: “It was obvious that the conflict was going to be frozen, that the problem was not solved, but it just gave Ukraine precious time.” Prouvost asked Hollande: “Do you also believe that the negotiations in Minsk were intended to delay Russian advances in Ukraine?”
