Successful for the Kremlin, that is.
“French FM Ayrault is Angry at Kiev for Sabotaging Peace in Donbass,” a headline on Kremlin mouthpiece Sputnik squawked gleefully after Ayrault’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Naturally, that was a distortion from Sputnik, which is a propaganda arm of the Kremlin masquerading as a news organization.
Nevertheless, as French newspaper Le Figaro correctly reported, Ayrault during his meeting with Lavrov called for Kyiv to meet its obligations under the Minsk II peace process.
“These delaying maneuvers have gone on too long,” Ayrault said, adding that Kyiv “must implement reforms and introduce, in particular, amendments to the constitution on the special status of the Donbas and the electoral process in the region.”
Le Figaro in its coverage mildly chided Ayrault for taking Moscow’s part, but we will be more forthright: It is absurd for the foreign minister of a Western nation to go to Moscow and criticize Kyiv for failing to implement Minsk II. The Minsk II process cannot even start until there is a cease-fire in the Donbas, and it is in Moscow’s power to achieve it. Ayrault should have demanded that the Kremlin cut off the flow of weapons, ammunition and fighters from Russia into the Donbas immediately as well as return control of the eastern border to Ukraine.
Instead, Ayrault merely called on the Russians to “use their influence” on the armed groups in the Donbas. That is also absurd: the armed groups in the Donbas were conceived and created, and are now controlled by the Kremlin, as anyone who has any understanding of the conflict in Ukraine knows.
We presume that as the foreign minister of a major Western nation, Ayrault is well informed by his advisers and the French intelligence services about the true situation in eastern Ukraine.
That just makes Ayrault’s statement about Kyiv’s “delaying maneuvers” all the more perfidious. The only maneuvers Ayrault should be concerned about right now are those being carried out by the tanks of Russia’s proxy army in the Donbas, where the violence is only getting worse.
It is the Kremlin that is delaying the implementation of Minsk II, not Kyiv. That is the message Ayrault should have brought to Moscow, rather than words of comfort to an aggressive and mendacious regime.
