by Karl Pomeroy
Quemado Institute
March 18, 2015
Merkel, Putin, Hollande (–Facebook.com)
The “Normandy Trio”, comprising German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, are all foreign bureaucrats that have nothing to do with the Ukraine war. Yet, acting as Agents of Virtue, they stepped in to intervene. The result was the Minsk 2.0 Agreements, signed in Belarus on February 12.
Angela Merkel (–Ukrinform)
Angela Merkel’s foremost objective was to preserve the “Order of Europe”, according to media reports. After all, the Ukraine war, compounded by growing anti-EU sentiments elsewhere in Europe, has threatened to shatter the bureaucratic structure and topple her seat of power. What is more, a civil war in an EU-candidate country, where the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, IMF and other Western interests are heavily invested in money laundering schemes (see Strategic Culture Foundation: Ukraine and the Rothschild Family, by Valentin Katasanov), has no doubt made her uncomfortable, especially during February, when some 2,200 NATO troops awaited slaughter in Debaltsevo.
Vladimir Putin (–Topnews.in)
Russian President Vladimir Putin prefers to remain enigmatic. Judging by his actions, he promoted Minsk 2.0 to appease the West in an obsequious dodge of the Crimea issue, just as he has continued to undermine the Donbass Republics all along, bowing to the US and its “fifth column” in Moscow (see Strelkov in Yekaterinburg predicted for Putin the fate of Milosevic). Saddam Hussein, we should recall with trepidation, perished in a similar effort, despite complying with every American mandate. Lesson: The US does not brook obsequiousness.
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Petro Poroshenko (–rt.com)
Petro Poroshenko, Kiev’s top hooligan, while feigning acquiesence to Merkel’s Nobel ambitions, was apparently dragged kicking and screaming to Minsk, frightened of his own internal right-wing opposition, which labels Donbass a “Russian occupied” territory and doggedly insists on crushing independence, possibly to the point of crushing him. He is willing to commit genocide to ensure a “united” Ukraine, and needs war to prevent collapse or deflect a military coup, as well as to perpetuate the funneling of loan money to the off-shore accounts of the oligarchs, while blaming the losses on military spending.
The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics Prime Ministers Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky were conspicuously absent from the main Minsk roster, invited as a footnote only to side meetings. Undeterred, they took full advantage of the swindle. In a brilliant strategic maneuver, they pretended to believe they were given a good deal by the venerated Normandy Trio, who pretended to give them that deal, and now, the two expect full compliance with the deal the Trio pretended to give them.
Alexander Zakharchenko (–Sott.net)
In Zakharchenko’s historic words of March 17, 2015: “That the Ukrainian soldiers rape our women – it’s a fact, everyone knows it. That they shoot local residents while being drunk, even on the territories under their control, is also a fact. A drunk soldier knocked over a family and killed a girl. Trust me, like any man I understand every time this happens, we can’t tolerate this any longer. The Ukrainian authorities are doing everything possible to continue the war. They can’t understand it in Kiev that we don’t perceive the Ukrainian power as ours. Whatever happens in Kiev, whichever laws they adopt, the fact still stands: they don’t want to live peacefully but to continue the war. Poroshenko can’t understand one thing: we are the Donetsk People’s Republic, we are not Ukraine any longer and we will never and under no circumstances come back to Ukraine.”
The following two Tass News Agency articles summarize the status of Minsk 2.0 today:
DPR, LPR leaders:
no compromise with Kiev until decision on Donbas status is canceled
Tass
March 18, 2015
Igor Plotnitsky and Alexander Zakharchenko (–Tass)
No compromise with Kiev is possible until the “disgraceful decisions” made by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the country’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) on the special status of Donbas (eastern regions of Ukraine) are canceled, the heads of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republic (DPR and LPR) Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky said in a joint statement on Wednesday [March 18].
“Denying a special status to Donbas, Kiev has trampled upon the fragile Minsk peace and brought the situation to a deadlock. Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk have cynically laughed at their European Union partners who have spent so much effort on negotiations. DPR and LPR declare that no compromise with Kiev is possible until yesterday’s disgraceful decisions of Poroshenko and the Verkhovna Rada are canceled,” says the statement posted on the website of the Luhansk information center.
Verkhovna Rada
The leaders state they think Kiev does not want peace, “seeking instead to destroy Donbas by violence and economic blockade.” The heads of the self-proclaimed republics expressed dissatisfaction in their statement with the Verkhovna Rada’s amendments to the law on the special status of Donbas, which were adopted on Tuesday. According to the statement, the amendments “include only the settlements along the line of contact, and not all the areas, cities, towns, villages, in which a special status should be introduced, as required by Article 1 of the Ukraine’s Law on the Special Status.” In addition, changes “that have not been agreed upon with DPR and LPR” have been introduced to the law that determine the conditions of holding local elections in Donbas. Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky also expressed indignation at the fact that “the introduction of the special status (regime) in certain districts of Donbas has been postponed indefinitely by Poroshenko’s amendments.” Thus, the statement says, “point 4 of the set of measures [to implement the Minsk peace settlement plan] is grossly violated.”
Rada’s appeal to the UN Security Council and the Council of the European Union with a request to deploy peacekeepers in Ukraine, according to the statement by the DPR and LPR heads, “is disturbing all the logic of the peace plan.” “It’s another attempt under the disguise of good intentions to withdraw from the Minsk agreements,” the statement says.
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Lavrov calls Kiev’s decision on Donbas special status
gross violation of Minsk agreements
Tass
March 18, 2015
Kiev’s decision on Donbas special status grossly violates and rewrites the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference on Wednesday. “On [Ukraine’s] President Petro Poroshenko’s proposal, the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] made a decision – which was particularly confusing as Ukraine’s president supported the Minsk package from February 12 – that, in fact, rewrites the agreements and, putting it simply, grossly violates them,” Lavrov said.
Sergei Lavrov (–Tass)
According to the minister, Moscow calls on Germany and France to make a joint demarche to Kiev for violating the Minsk agreements. “No one forced the Ukrainian side to officially recognize the results of the elections, but the least the Ukrainian authorities should do is to respect these processes and fulfill the agreements,” the foreign minister said. “There were no additional prerequisites for adopting this law [on Donbas special status],” Lavrov noted. “They only had to define settlements, concrete areas,” he said. “I don’t know how the political process [in Ukraine] will go now,” Lavrov added. “Yesterday, I addressed the heads of foreign ministries of France and Germany with special requests, drew their attention to Kiev’s flagrant violation of first steps of the political part of the Minsk package and called on them [France and Germany] to make a joint three-party demarche to our Ukrainian colleagues in order to prompt them to fulfill what they have signed themselves and what was supported by the leaders of Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia,” Lavrov said.
In reply to a question from TASS …, Lavrov said Kiev has not even tried to start a dialogue with Donetsk and Luhansk over the modality of elections there. “Immediately after the pullback of heavy weapons a dialogue was to begin over the modalities of holding elections in the corresponding districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Lavrov said. In other words, under the Minsk Accords the modality of elections was to be coordinated with Donetsk and Luhansk. Nobody has ever even tried to do this.”
For further updates see News from Novorossiya at the top of this page, or click here.
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