As also reported in the Der Spiegel article, Putin showed his willingness, as he has in the past, to apply pressure to the rebel leadership to agree to diplomatic compromises. However, there has been no evidence throughout the Ukraine crisis that the West is willing to apply reciprocal pressure on Kiev, which has broken every previous agreement since February of 2014. Unless the West forces Kiev to face reality, the pattern will continue in which the war smolders then flares up again until the Kiev regime collapses from its own incompetence and delusions.
There have been several events after the signing of Minsk 2.0 on February 12th that do not bode well. Svoboda storm trooper Andriy Parubiy was in Washington requesting more weapons for Kiev during the week of February 25. The U.S. has sent troops to Ukraine this month to train the Ukrainian national guard. Ukraine's Interior Ministry admitted the training could include the vicious neo-Nazi Azov battalion, although a US Embassy representative denied that. The Right Sector has also just been officially incorporated into the Ukrainian Army under its neo-Nazi leader Dmytro Yarosh who is now Ukraine's Chief of General Staff. Sending American troops to Ukraine would appear to be a violation of the Minsk 2.0 agreement which requires the removal of all foreign fighters and mercenaries from Ukraine.
But perhaps the most disturbing development was the Kiev parliament's demand in mid-March that the rebels effectively surrender and allow Kiev to organize elections before any federalization would occur. The Minsk agreement reflected no such requirement from the rebels. Instead, Kiev was supposed to begin negotiating with representatives of the rebel republics toward a special status. As DPR official Denis Pushilin stated, "Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande have declared they would guarantee that Ukraine would carryout Minsk 2.0. Therefore, they now have to bring Poroshenko to heel as by his actions he is ripping up the Minsk agreements."
Meanwhile, Germany is reportedly disgusted with shenanigans by American hawks like NATO commander Philip Breedlove and Victoria Nuland that thwart work toward negotiating a settlement. As a subsequent Der Spiegel article detailed, Breedlove's constant assertions of Russia's military incursions, which are contradicted by Germany's intelligence sources (as well as France's), are particularly troubling:
Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda."".It is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and, by extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credibility.
".Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove's controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political solution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.
Sources in Washington acknowledge that Breedlove's comments are cleared ahead of time with both the White House and the Pentagon.
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