NATO Chose War over Minsk Agreements at Least Four Years Ago

March 8, 2022 (EIRNS)—Military Times, in a report on the development of the Ukrainian “resistance” against Russia, exposes, perhaps unintentionally, that NATO chose war for Ukraine as far back as 2018 rather than pressuring the Kiev regime to implement the Minsk Agreements. Since 2018, the Military Times reports, U.S. and European officials have quietly helped Ukraine implement key portions of a total defense framework that military officials call the “Resistance Operating Concept” (ROC), according to a U.S. special operations official, who requested anonymity to discuss the project.

The ROC centers around building up the capacity of NATO members and friendly countries to mount an effective civil and military resistance “if they were to face Russian invasion,” wrote Davis Winkie in Air Force Times yesterday. “Nations supported under the ROC are encouraged to develop the legal and organizational framework for a resistance and bring it under the official control of their armed forces. That makes it easier for resistance forces to receive external training, funding, and weapons. Ukraine’s total defense project, which is part of a U.S. and NATO–supported defense reform collaboration that has been ongoing since war began in 2014, resulted in such a framework last year,” referring to Kiev’s attacks on the Donbas breakaway republics, instead of implementing the Minsk Agreement requirements for negotiation talks.

The U.S. special operations official familiar with the country’s resistance planning, explained to Military Times that other countries have also implemented lessons from “Ukraine’s combat experience against Russia [sic] in the Donbas region.” Kiev’s legislature passed “On the Fundamentals of National Resistance” last July, according to a release from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office. The legislation included “important measures aimed at developing territorial defense and resistance movement, and introducing a system of preparing the population for national resistance.” The legislature might have done better to pass the legislation called for in the Minsk Agreements aimed at settling the conflict in the Donbas.

Under the tutelage of NATO, the regime has opened a new website, the “National Resistance Center,” run by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, which offers advice and handbooks for would-be insurgents of all stripes. It also disseminates “fresh news” daily on protests and resistance actions in areas of the country seized by Russian forces.