Thread by @neil_abrams

A common Twitter exchange:

Tankie: Stop arming Ukraine!

Reasonable person: What exactly do you suggest instead?

Tankie: Pressure Ukraine to implement the Minsk accords!

So what are the Minsk accords, and why is the tankie line on Minsk ridiculous?

A thread.

Tankie propaganda on Minsk is an attempt to shift blame from Russia, where it properly belongs, to Ukraine, where it doesn’t: “If only Ukraine implemented Minsk, we wouldn’t be in this situation!” It’s straight gaslighting. To simplify things, I’ll call it “gasminsking.”

I’m gonna keep this as short as possible, since explaining the intricacies of the Minsk process is only slightly more alluring than the thought of blowing my brains out. But it’s important because tankies, when pressed for details on a “peace deal,” use Minsk as their trump card.

You won’t hear most tankies talk about Minsk, but a few do. Take Caitlin Johnstone, for instance:

Of course, the undisputed king of gasminsking is @aaronjmate. Maté is smarter than most tankies. His takes tend to be less inane than those of, say, an @mtracey. So when asked for specifics on a peace deal, he’s done enough Wikipedia diving to have a ready-made answer: Minsk.

Tankie gasminsking boils down to a few claims, two of which we’ll examine here: First, Minsk has always offered the best path to peace, and still does. Second, Minsk’s failure to bring peace was the result of Ukraine’s refusal to abide by the terms.

But first, some background:

In late-February 2014, mere days after Yanukovych fled, Russian troops occupied Crimea. Soon after, the Kremlin launched a major initiative to stir up separatist, anti-government protests in other parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

That spring, the Kremlin financed and organized demonstrations of paid protesters across eastern and southern Ukraine. The idea was to create the appearance of an organic local uprising. Leaked tapes from Putin adviser Sergei Glazyev reveal the scope of these efforts.

Source for the Glazyev leaks, including transcripts: khpg.org/en/1551054011

That Russia had to wholly manufacture this uprising shows just how anemic separatist sentiment was among residents of eastern and southern Ukraine, a fact confirmed by opinion polls at the time. kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=…

Not that this is surprising; Crimea is Ukraine’s only majority-ethnic Russian province. But note how much lower support for joining Russia was than the % of ethnic Russians in each region. Even ethnic Russians weren’t all that enthusiastic about joining Russia.

So it’s no wonder the Kremlin had forge a fake rebellion out of whole cloth. Still, local residents weren’t buying it, and it never got off the ground. So Putin responded by sending irregular Russian forces into the Donbas to pose as native rebels.

There’s a mountain of evidence confirming the presence of irregular Russian forces in the Donbas operating under the Kremlin’s direction. See, for instance, this excellent and meticulously-researched report: imrussia.org/media/pdf/An_I…

The Russian irregulars seized considerable territory and set up Russian proxy administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk. Only then did Kyiv, bankrupt and with no military worthy of the name thanks to Yanukovych’s outrageous plundering, launch its first military operation.

Incredibly, Kyiv’s improvised forces, cobbled together from state and private actors and financed in part from small donations, started absolutely kicking ass, recovering most of the lost territory and confining the Russian irregulars to a small slice of land.

Faced once again with humiliating defeat, Putin brought out the big guns. In August 2014, he sent thousands of regular Russian troops into the Donbas. The arrival of actual Russian army units turned the tide, reconquering most of the land Ukrainian forces had recently recovered

Russian defense expert Igor Sutyagin estimated that several thousand Russian regulars were present in the Donbas at this time, a number that would peak at 10,000 by mid-December 2014. static.rusi.org/201503_bp_russ…

Likewise, as of September 2014 the Russian Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, an independent NGO in Russia, estimated that 10-15,000 regular Russian troops had already been sent to Ukraine. theguardian.com/world/2014/sep….

The OSCE, whose representatives had been observing events on the ground since 2014 (until Russia kicked them out in 2021), has documented the presence in the Donbas of thousands of Russian soldiers. osce.usmission.gov/russias-ongoin…

In 2016, the International Criminal Court found evidence of “direct military engagement between the respective armed forces of the Russian Federation and Ukraine … from 14 July 2015 at the latest.” icc-cpi.int/sites/default/…

Of course, there also the testimony of the Russian nationals dispatched by the Kremlin to take command of the irregular forces. They freely acknowledge the war effort would have failed were it not for the arrival of Russian army units. khpg.org/en/1565889311

The Russian military’s success against Ukraine’s dilapidated forces compelled Kyiv to sue for peace. The result was the Minsk accords. They consisted of two agreements, the first signed in Sept. 2014 and the second, dubbed Minsk II, following in Feb. 2015.

To crudely summarize, Minsk’s key provisions called for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of forces, the decentralization of power to Donetsk and Luhansk, and the holding of local elections in the two regions.

Crucially, the elections were to be carried out under Ukrainian law, with Ukraine’s involvement, and under the supervision of the OSCE.

But Russia’s Donbas proxies just went ahead and held sham elections on their own, outside the Minsk framework and with no monitoring. osce.org/cio/126242

I mean, the Kremlin was well aware that most of the local population was not behind its occupation. So conducting free and fair elections under international monitoring wasn’t exactly an option, was it?

Here, again, are opinion polls by region on support for joining Russia. Local enthusiasm at the prospect of becoming the 47th and 48th oblasts of Russia wasn’t exactly overwhelming.

Feb. 2014 (left): kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=…

Apr. 2014 (right): kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=…

Russian election-rigging wasn’t the only problem. Both sides repeatedly violated the ceasefire, too. But only Russia’s forces went so far as to conquer *more* territory, taking advantage of Ukraine’s weak military position.

What’s worse, Russia wouldn’t even admit it was a party to the agreements. This prompted a logical question: “Well then why the hell did you sign them?” Russia’s stance was “if you want Minsk to be implemented, talk to the Donbas ‘rebels’, whom we have nothing to do with.”

(source: tass.com/world/1334327)

For Ukraine, this was a nonstarter, as the Donbas “rebels” operated under Moscow’s control and relied on the presence of Russian forces. As a result, Ukraine insisted that Russia take responsibility for fulfilling its end of the Minsk bargain.

As if all that weren’t enough, the Minsk accords turned out to be a jumbled mess of mutually-contradictory provisions which were accordingly interpreted by the two sides in polar-opposite terms. Mercifully, Duncan Allen of Chatham House explains it all so I don’t have to.

Consequently, Minsk was stillborn from the start and would largely remain so all the way up to Russia’s second invasion in 2022. Here’s the link to the Chatham House report: chathamhouse.org/2020/05/minsk-…

But it’s silly to argue, as tankies like @caitoz and @aaronjmate do, that Ukraine is the only side standing in the way of Minsk’s implementation. Look at this breakdown of the Minsk provisions as of 2020 and note how many labeled “not implemented” depend exclusively on Russia.

@caitoz @aaronjmate Restoring Ukraine’s control over its border? Removing all foreign armed groups from Ukraine? Holding free and fair elections in the Donbas? Russia ain’t about to let any of that happen. Ever.

Source for above: researchgate.net/publication/33…

Many of the “partially implemented” provisions, too, remain that way largely if not entirely because of Russia’s intransigeance.

https://twitter.com/SpBDaveTDC/status/1582420797968109573?s=20&t=g71PjyyefJp7ZyU_NaJLJA

Another key to understanding Minsk’s failure was that Ukraine signed the agreements under duress, having just been beaten back by the arrival of Russian army units. Thanks largely to Yanukovych’s looting, you’ll recall, Ukraine no longer possessed a proper military of its own.

So Minsk reflected Ukraine’s weak position and Russia’s comparable strength at the time of signing. The terms, if implemented, would have been devastating to Ukraine’s sovereignty, resulting in an effectively independent Donbas under Russia’s de facto control.

Lots of civil wars end with the successful adoption of a federal state structure that grants autonomy to a secessionist region. But this wasn’t a civil war; it was a state-to-state war being treated as a civil war. Donbas “autonomy” would thus amount to Ukraine’s partition.

In addition, over the ensuing years Ukraine built its military into the formidable fighting force the world has come to recognize this past year. So as time wore on, Kyiv had less incentive to abide by Minsk, having agreed to the terms when it was in a far weaker position.

Not that Ukraine has any moral obligation to comply. The only reason the Minsk accords exist in the first place is because Russia, by invading Crimea and Donbas, broke *its own* past pledges to abide by Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

The first was the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia agreed to respect the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in exchange for the latter three handing their Soviet-era nukes back to Russia.

Nor was the Budapest Memorandum the only instance in which Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty—yes, including Crimea. Moscow made the same pledge in 1997 when it signed the Russian–Ukrainian Friendship Treaty.

So anyone who wants to come at me with some sanctimonious lecture about Ukraine violating its sacred treaty obligations can get the fuck out of here with that shit.

Anyway, Russia’s extensive history of shirking its treaty commitments, from the Budapest Memorandum up through the Minsk accords, sheds light on another tankie talking point: The supposed sabotage by the U.K. of an April 2022 interim peace agreement.

In early April, Ukraine and Russia were reportedly close to an interim settlement. Then, U.K. PM Boris Johnson showed up in Kyiv and told Zelensky the West wasn’t ready for Kyiv to sign anything, after which negotiations stalled. foreignaffairs.com/russian-federa…

When the news broke, tankie world entered full-blown meltdown: “See? NATO is forcing an unwilling Ukraine to slaughter its own people for the sake of its evil proxy war on Russia!!!”

But put yourself in Zelensky’s shoes in April 2022. The horrific Bucha revelations just broke. Russia’s in retreat. Ukraine is *winning* and has a chance to press the advantage. Yet Germany’s over here withholding crucial weaponry and insisting on peace negotiations.

If you’re Zelensky, your top priority is to keep the Western world united behind you, and if that means demonstrating to Germany your willingness to negotiate in good faith, then so be it.

At the same time, Zelensky knows from experience how worthless Russia’s word is, and it’s perfectly obvious an embattled Russia merely regarded the interim peace deal as a chance to regroup before resuming its campaign to conquer and dismember his country.

So either (1) a deeply credulous Zelensky really did intend to sign this agreement, thus aiding Russia at Ukraine’s expense; or (2) He desperately wanted out of it while not alienating Germany in the process, and Boris Johnson’s intervention saved his ass.

Either/or. Pick one.

But Maria Popova, the Jean Monnet Chair in Europe & the Rule of Law at McGill and an expert on Russian and Ukrainian politics, spells it out better than I ever could. Take it away, @PopovaProf:

So there you have it. When tankies talk about Minsk, they’re gaslighting people into believing Ukraine is at least as guilty as Russia for the current war, and the arguments they invoke to do so are about as silly as their other propagandistic musings. /End