The Minsk Deception and the Planned War in Donbas
There is a historically possible world in which the Minsk Agreement never needed to be made.
In 2014, a US supported coup removed the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, with his eastern base, and replaced him with a West leaning president who was handpicked by the US. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland can be heard on an intercepted phone call selecting Arseniy Yatsenyuk as America’s choice to replace Yanukovych.
The new government denied the multicultural Ukraine demanded by Donbas. It demanded a nationalistic monist vision of Ukraine. The ethnic Russians of the Donbas would suffer attacks on their language, their culture, their rights, their property and their lives.
The Donbas rebelled against the coup government, and by May 2014 had approved referendums declaring some form of autonomy. The civil war in Ukraine had begun.
The best available solution to the violence in the Donbas was the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements were brokered by France and Germany, agreed to by Ukraine and Russia, and accepted by the US and UN in 2014 and 2015. They gave Ukraine the opportunity to keep the Donbas and the Donbas the opportunity for peace and the governance they desire by peacefully returning the Donbas to Ukraine while granting it full autonomy.
But there was a possible solution before the Minsk agreements.
On May 11, the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Donbas voted in favor of sovereignty. Putin had asked them to delay the referenda, and, while Moscow respected the will of the people, it did not recognize the results.
Two weeks later, Pyotr Poroshenko was elected president, and he initiated negotiations for a peaceful settlement with rebel leaders in Donbas. The talks were promising, and, by the end of the next month, a formula for peacefully keeping Donbas in Ukraine had been found. At this point, on June 24, the Russian parliament rescinded the authority to use troops abroad. A peace was possible.