Volodymyr Zelensky
defeated Petro Poroshenko in the 2019 election on a platform that included
making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk Agreements. The Minsk Agreements
would have granted a degree of autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of
the Donbas that had voted for independence from Ukraine after the 2014 US
backed coup put a government in power that was handpicked by the US and that
was pro-West and anti-Russian. It was intense pressure from the far right wing
ultranationalists that bent Zelensky from a Minsk backer into the shape of a
Minsk rejecter. Under that pressure from neo-Nazi parties that have large power
that is disproportionate to their small support, Zelensky abandoned his
campaign peace promise and refused to talk to the leaders of the Donbas and
implement the Minsk Agreements.
