You're reading: Kuchma says Minsk agreements helped prevent escalation of war in Donbas, more losses

Leonid Kuchma, representative of Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group on the situation in Donbas and the second president of Ukraine, believes the first Minsk agreements helped de-escalate the military action in the eastern regions of the country.

“To objectively evaluate the significance of the Trilateral Contact Group and the first Minsk agreements it is enough to recall the situation of late summer 2014. Above all, it was the Ilovaisk tragedy. We are still courting the losses from it,” Kuchma said in an interview with Interfax, commenting on the need for the creation and significance of the work of the contact group.

In this context, he said: “Without Minsk I we would have lost a lot more territories and people.”

Kuchma said he regrets that some politicians who reason on this issue “have engaged in the open replacement of concepts and facts.”

“The most ardent flag-wavers went as far as to say that Ukraine would have freed Donbas a long time ago if it wasn’t for the Minsk agreements. They probably forgot the situation in which Minsk I and Minsk II were signed, they forgot about Ilovaisk and Debaltseve,” Kuchma said.

“It was the Minsk agreements that helped stop the escalation of the war with unpredictable consequences,” Kuchma said.