Thread by @PavelSlunkin

Exactly 8 years ago today Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko met in Minsk's Palace of Independence to negotiate ceasefire and peace in Ukraine after Russia's invasion in 2014.
I was BY diplomat then and worked with the UA delegation. Here is my thread about that night.

Let's first add some context here. The Normandy format meeting in Minsk attracted enormous attention to Belarus that was gradually getting out of international isolation and surpisingly took a rather neutral stance on the war.

Lukashenka didn't recognise the annexation of Crimea and cautiously stood up for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. This let him present Belarus as a relatively neutral country that can suit for negotiations purposes.

Not many people know, but Lukashenka stroke iron while it was hot and even wanted to get himself at the negotiations table. This was of course blocked by Germany and France and he finally gave up. Later he will say that his role that night was to "bring coffee and ammunition"

The delegations arrived in Minsk on February 11, 2015. And you can easily guess who was disrespectfully late.

Merkel and Hollande landed in Minsk almost at the same time and Germany's Chancellor asked to meet before they move to the Palace. They met in a plane. In the Merkel's plane, of course. In Palace they arrived together too.

France's President Mr Hollande looked like he didn't know what he was doing there. So he chose the simplest strategy - followed Angela Merkel and her instructions. You can easily read it even in the photos from that night.

After the first round of talks the heads of delegations finally came out for a group photo and Lukashenka invited the delegations for the dinner. Hollande happily agreed, but Merkel cut him off abruptly saying "no time to have dinner, we start working". And they went back to work

Many diplomats asked me about this photo: "What protocol rule did you apply to assign the place for flags and presidents? This is no alphabetic, no cadence order". Lukashenka had his own patriarchal logic - "lady in the center (the best position), Poroshenko and Putin separated"

The talks lasted almost almost 17 hours. It was a hard marathon for everyone. But Putin had his own "doping" from the host country. He was the only one who had a room with a bed right in the Palace. Several times he left the table looking tired and came back fresh after some time

Poroshenko looked exhausted. He had almost no sleep the night before Minsk and was to arrive to Brussels for the EU summit right after the talks in BY. He regularly called to Ukraine to get an update from the front and specifically from Debaltseve that was being heavily attacked

Nobody expected the negotiations to last that long and the Palace started looking like this.

You all know about the Minsk agreements signed that night (if you don't, please, read this thread by @DumoulinME here:

https://twitter.com/DumoulinME/status/1574849096434782212?s=20&t=VhlzZdRvw34lxcC8dBxLoA

)
So, I will end this thread with my personal story after these talks and how the roads of life can intertwine.

The honeymoon period in the relations between Belarus and the West ended in 2020, when Lukashenka rigged elections, brutally cracked down the protests and political prisoners again appeared in the country (first time since 2015).
I resigned from MFA in protest and joined @ecfr

A little later I moved to Ukraine, the country that I supported so much since 2013, worked with during the Minsk talks and that became my second home after I had to leave my Homeland.

My friend & former colleague @PMatsukevich who worked with Merkel that night and who resigned in protest in 2020 had to flee from BY too. We both work as policy analysts now.

My other friend @A_Shraibman worked as TUT.BY journalist during the talks. In 2021 https://t.co/qQtJ557cqD was labelled "extremist" and destroyed by Belarusian authorities, jornalists were jailed. Artyom managed to flee to Ukraine too.

In @ecfr I met @DumoulinME who was dealing with the Minsk agreements when she worked for the France MFA.
And @GresselGustav who has been covering the war and Minsk process for many years.

In 2021 I met Pavlo Klimkin, ex-Foreign Minister of Ukraine. This happened for the first time since our first meeting that night in Minsk in 2015.

Belarus Foreign Minister Makei died in November 2022.
Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko are no longer state leaders.
Lukashenka remains in Palace until now. He "brings ammunition" to the war against Ukraine now literally, not figuratively

I lived in Ukraine until Russia invaded it again on February 24, 2022.
I don't know when and where this story will end, but I wish Ukraine to win. And it definitely will.