In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky swept to power in a shocking landslide victory, taking 73 percent of the run-off vote. He won on a platform with two major planks: first, implementing the Minsk Agreements and making peace with Russia, and second, fighting high-level corruption in Ukraine’s government. Both planks are now in splinters. The Minsk Agreements are dead, Ukraine and Russia are almost in their fourth year of hideous war, and the scandal of high-level corruption has crept into Zelensky’s innermost circle.
Upon being elected, Zelensky told reporters that he would “reboot” peace talks with separatists in Donbas and that “we will continue in the direction of the Minsk [peace] talks and head towards concluding a ceasefire.” But it was not to be.
Ultranationalist leaders defied Zelensky and warned that fulfilling his campaign promises would lead to protests and riots. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector paramilitary organization, threatened that, if Zelensky were to pursue a ceasefire, “he will lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk boulevard if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War. And it is very important that he understand this.”
But it is also now known that no one ever intended the Minsk Agreements to work. Each of Putin’s partners in the Minsk process, including then Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s President François Hollande and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko have confirmed that the Minsk Accords were a deception designed to lull Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peaceful settlement while actually buying Ukraine the time it needed to build up an armed forces capable of achieving a military solution.
Despite his campaign promise, in February 2023, Zelensky reportedly told Der Spiegel that he saw the agreements as a “concession,” and he “surprised” Merkel and Macron by telling them that “as for Minsk as a whole...we cannot implement it like this.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member