Former French President Francois Hollande, who held this post from 2012 to 2017, said that the Minsk agreements broke Putin's plan and allowed the Armed Forces to be strengthened.. He said this during an interview with The Kyiv Independent.

The ex-president of France was one of the participants in the Normandy format, launched in June 2014. It included the presidents of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia.

Earlier, German ex-chancellor Angela Merkel said about the Minsk agreements: "

Yes, Angela Merkel is right about that.. The Minsk agreements stopped the Russian offensive for a while,"

" Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different than in 2014.. She was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk agreements that the Ukrainian army got such an opportunity. Thus, the time that Putin considered to be his property really turned out to be an opportunity for Ukrainians,"

According to him, the geopolitical situation after 2014 was not favorable for Ukraine..

“It was very important to know how the West is using this respite to prevent further attempts by Russia. But what has happened since then? We have already seen America withdraw from the international arena in Syria. The Trump presidency has weakened ties between Europeans and the United States within the Atlantic Finally, the defeat of Afghanistan was seen by Putin as a new sign of weakness in the Western camp. As for Europe, it failed to understand how its dependence on Russian gas made it vulnerable, so Putin thought it was time to. benefit and he could cross the threshold by further invasion of Ukraine. Hence the aggression he committed. This is where he made a mistake,"

" His army is much less impressive than he imagined, and the Ukrainian resistance is much louder than he expected,"

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He also noted that the Minsk agreements prevented Putin from seizing Donbass and did not allow expanding the temporarily occupied territory..

" Even if we saw that there was a clear reluctance, there was still a dialogue. Since 2017-2018, this Normandy format has been on the last. stage. Because, on the one hand, the Ukrainian side saw that Russian threats became clearer (and Moscow did not want peace). On the other hand, Vladimir Putin began to tire of this agreement, as it prevented him from moving towards the desired complete conquest of Donbass.. Putin in 2015 was to push the front line as far as possible. Mariupol was already in his sight. The Minsk agreements and the ceasefire resulting from them did not allow the expansion of the territory controlled by the separatists. This is one of their advantages,"

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Recall that earlier the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov said that France would continue to support Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion by continuing to provide weapons and ammunition, including air defense equipment to protect our skies..