Former French President Hollande Admits Minsk Accords Allowed Kiev to Boost Military Power

BERLIN (Sputnik) - Former French President Franсois Hollande said on Saturday that the Minsk agreements signed by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in 2014, allowed Ukraine to boost its military capacity presumably to wage war with Russia.

"The time, provided to Ukraine by the Minsk agreements, allowed it to boost its military capacity," Hollande told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The former French top official also said that the establishment of the Nord Stream pipeline should have been shut down at the stage of its construction, and that Western companies should have left the Russian market much earlier.

The Minsk accords were a complex series of measures negotiated by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in 2014-2015 in a bid to put an end to the armed conflict between the Kiev authorities and the breakaway region of Donbas. Moscow repeatedly stated that Kiev was not fulfilling the deal, for example not granting self-government to the Russian-speaking region of Donbas.

In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted he never intended to implement the Minsk agreements. Both former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hollande, who participated in the Normandy format, admitted the same.

They said that negotiating the Minsk accords with Russia was a stalling tactic to buy time to arm and train the Ukrainian military with no intention to comply with their provisions. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in turn, said that the Normandy format had been nothing but a "diplomatic imitation."