Merkel's weakness is making the failure of Minsk 2.0 inevitable. Feeling no western pressure Kiev is unwilling to make the political concessions necessary for its implementation.Mercouri chiefly faults Merkel for not pressuring the Poroshenko government to implement the conditions agreed to at Minsk 2. But I would say that there are many other factors contributing to the impasse. However, I would agree that Merkel should have known that the agreement would not work when Poroshenko denied the existence of a cauldron at Debaltsevo.
At that point, the agreement was grasping at straws unless she was willing to pressure Poroshenko to keep his part of the bargain. given that Ukraine has the backing of Western funding and the US and UK are encouraging a military solution, there was almost no possibility that Merkel's project could succeed. Now it is dead in the water.
It is difficult to see these as the actions of a strong leader determinedly carrying out a policy. Rather they suggest a weak leader concerned about her popularity and unwilling to take risks. Whatever Merkel’s skills as a leader who looks for and achieves consensus within Germany, the Ukrainian crisis has found her wanting and seriously out of her depth. This crisis calls for a strong and self-confident leader, which as it turns out Merkel is not, showing that the strength people tend to attribute to her is really Germany’s strength rather than hers.
Unsurprisingly therefore Merkel's behaviour since Ukraine has failed to carry out the political commitments it took on itself through Minsk 2.0 has been the same as it was when Ukraine failed to carry out its commitments under Minsk 1.0....
Russia Insider
On Wednesday, March 18th, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister of Ukraine .... told his cabinet meeting, “Our goal is to regain control of Donetsk and Lugansk.” Those are the two districts comprising Donbass, the self-proclaimed independent region of Ukraine, which now calls itself “The People’s Republic“ and sometimes “Novorossiya,” and which rejects the coup and its coup-imposed Government....
Yatsenyuk announced there: “Adequate financial resources are available,” to retake Donbass. Those “resources” came largely from the IMF, and from the United States, all with loans to the bankrupt Ukrainian Government...
Yatsenyuk told his cabinet that, “We will fight using all methods and techniques for the resumption of peace and regaining control of Donetsk and Luhansk region.” By ‘resumption of peace,’ he meant resumption of control over Donbass....
On March 17th, Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, voted to declare Donbass to be “temporarily occupied territory,” until the residents there are conquered....
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