You made the claim "As Merkel later admitted Minsk was about buying Ukraine time and preparing for war with Russia."
I asked you provide the full text of what she said so we could test the accuracy/validity of your claim and you failed to do that.... or even respond initially ....until I sent a friendly reminder.
Merkel was commenting on the 2008 Bucharest/NATO Summit and was responding to the interviewer when she said...' Ithought that the introduction of NATO accession of Ukraine and Georgia,discussed in 2008, was wrong. The countries did not have the necessaryprerequisites for this, nor was it fully understood what the consequences ofsuch a decision would have been, both with regard to Russia’s actions againstGeorgia and Ukraine, as well as NATO and its rules of assistance. And the MinskAgreement of 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine also used this time to grow stronger, as you can see today.
So her comments were all about accession to NATO and the 'time' mentioned was in connection with them obtaining the necessary prerequisites and with the benefit of hindsight she made the observation Ukraine also used this time to grow stronger...
And we can look at what else she said earlierin the same interview..
Or let's look at my policy onRussia and Ukraine. I come to the conclusion that I made my decisions at thetime in a way that is comprehensible to me even today. It was an attempt to prevent precisely such a war. The fact that this did not succeed does notmean that the attempts were therefore wrong.
And we can look at what she said in 2015....
I cannot imagine any situation in whichimproved equipment for the Ukrainian army leads to President Putin being soimpressed that he believes he will lose militarily.
And what she said in January 2022
I do not think it's realisticto believe such weapons exports could turn around the military imbalance. Thebest protection is to prevent further aggression.
All of that is hardly supportive of your claim or of someone involved in a planned ruse as you've been manipulated into believing by the careful 'seizure' of a handful of words she uttered with no context rammed down your willing throat by those creative souls in the Kremlin Propaganda and Disinformation Machine and its many mouthpieces and Parrots.
