Minsk agreement shows that war buttons are being pushed from Moscow, Lithuanian political analyst says

“The Minsk negotiations are viewed from highly different perspectives. Some hold a historic stance and recall Munich in 1938, but we can look at more recent agreements. Whatever became of the agreement bearing a nearly identical Minsk Group name on the Nagorno Karabakh issue? It is a conflict that has been dragged out for more than two decades and still unsolved. We can recall the 2008 agreement on Georgia – has the Russian Federation translated it into reality? Or were the achievements of the September 2014 talks ever implemented? All of the negotiations included different participants, while Russia was present in all of them,” the political scientist told BNS on Thursday.

In his words, the latest talks is yet another piece of evidence that the Kremlin is directly responsible for the military actions in eastern Ukraine. “If (Russian President Vladimir) Putin calls a ceasefire as on February 15, it means that the button is being pushed in Moscow,” Jurkonis said.

In comment of Thursday’s Minsk agreement, Jurkonis emphasized that the differences in rhetoric from the Russian president and Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko show that “we cannot talk about anything more than a compromise, which, unfortunately, means short-term solutions”.

“Pulling back heavy munitions or possible exchange of prisoners would be an optimistic scenario. Nevertheless, looking at the negotiations as an all-embracing process, they do not result in an agreement or a signed treaty, but implementation of the agreement. The above-mentioned examples give little hope,” Jurkonis concluded.