West Begins to Understand That US Provocation Lies at Heart of Ukrainian Conflict: Moscow

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Western countries are gradually beginning to understand that the Ukraine crisis stems from Washington's provocative policy, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday.

"Additional enlightenment, an additional position is manifested here and there that, it turns out, the US provocation is at the heart of the entire Ukraine situation. And it is not us who is getting this insight as we did understand everything a long time ago and have been trying to tell everyone about it for many years. This awareness comes to the West, comes to experts, political scientists and journalists, who, someone more timidly, someone more insistently say that [US] provocativeness is obvious and it has led to such consequences," Zakharova said on the air of Russian online show Solovyev Live.

The spokeswoman added that those states that did not intend to comply with the Minsk agreements from the very beginning should be held accountable for that.

In 2014, the Minsk Agreements were signed by Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe with mediation of France and Germany to find a political resolution to the military conflict in eastern Ukraine. The deal failed and Minsk II, a revised version, was signed the following year. Moscow repeatedly stated that Kiev was not fulfilling the deal, for example not granting self-government to the Russian-speaking breakaway territories in Donbass.

In February 2022, Russia recognized independence of the republics in Donbass and began a military operation in Ukraine responding to calls for help from them. The US and its allies responded by imposing comprehensive sanctions against Russia while also increasing their military support for Ukraine. The breakaway republics of Ukraine were incorporated into Russia last fall after referendums.

In December 2022, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the German newspaper that the 2014 Minsk agreement was an "attempt to give Ukraine extra time" before a wide-scale military conflict with Russia.