As the devastating war between Russia and Ukraine grinds on, any assessment of the seven years long (2014-2021) peace mediation efforts known as the Minsk process is inevitably informed by the plain fact of failure. The Minsk process, led by France and Germany, began in mid-2014 in response to Russian military aggression against Ukraine. In early 2015, it achieved a temporary stalemate but did not resolve the crisis. It ended in abject breakdown when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
At the time of writing, the prospects for a viable peace process to end the Russia-Ukraine war are very uncertain. Nevertheless, any future process needs to be informed by lessons drawn from the previous failed efforts. Contemporary analyses of the format and flaws of the Minsk process tend to take a more critical view than the research done prior to the start of the war.1 This paper contributes to the discussion by evaluating the gap between the strategies of the belligerent parties (Russia and Ukraine) and those of the two key mediators (France and Germany), which doomed the Minsk process to failure.
In hindsight, it is remarkable how the mediators remained blind to this development, and how this blindness caused them to ignore warnings and intelligence briefings from the United States (US) on the looming invasion of 2022.2 The purpose here is not to criticize the self-deception of Western stakeholders in the Minsk process, for whom the status quo was perfectly acceptable. Rather, the point is to highlight the risks of misinterpreting the signals of the warring parties and misjudging their readiness to compromise in the apparent stalemate. This paper provides an overview of the conflict and mediation dynamics and then discusses the juxtaposition of the strategies of the belligerents and the mediators.
