All of the risks of the agreement are imposed on the break-away republics and on Putin. The provinces are required to give up all their gains while Washington trains and arms Ukrainian forces to attack the provinces. The republics have to give up their security and trust Kiev long before Kiev votes, assuming it ever does, autonomy for the republics.
Moreover, if the one-sided terms of the Minsk agreement result in failure, Putin and the republics will be blamed.
Why would Putin make such a deal and force it on the republics? If the deal becomes a Russian sell-out of the republics, it will hurt Putin's nationalist support within Russia and make it easier for Washington to weaken Putin and perhaps achieve regime change. It looks more like a surrender than a fair deal.
Perhaps Putin's strategy is to give away every advantage in the expectation that the deal will fail, and the Russian government can say "we gave away the store and the deal still failed."
Washington's coup in Kiev and the attack on the Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east and south is part of Washington's strategy to reassert its uni-power position. Russia's independent foreign policy and Russia's growing economic and political relationships with Europe became problems for Washington. Washington is using Ukraine to attack and to demonize Russia and its leader and to break-up Russia's economic and political relations with Europe. That is what the sanctions are about. A peace deal in Ukraine on any terms other than Washington's is unacceptable to Washington. The only acceptable deal is a deal that is a defeat for Russia.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Russian government made a strategic mistake when it did not accept the requests of the break-away provinces to be united with Russia. The people in the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces favored unification with the same massive majorities that the people in Crimea showed. If the provinces had been united with Russia, it would have been the end of the conflict. Neither Ukraine nor Washington is going to attack Russian territory.
By failing to end the conflict by unification, Putin set himself up as the punching bag for Western propaganda. The consequence is that over the many months during which the conflict has been needlessly drawn out, Putin has had his image and reputation in the West destroyed. He is the "new Hitler." He is "scheming to restore the Soviet Empire." "Russia ranks with ebola and the Islamist State as the three greatest threats." "RT is a terrorist organization like Boco Haram and the Islamist State." And so on and on. This CNN interview with Obama conducted by Washington's presstitute Fareed Zakaria shows the image of Putin based entirely on lies that rules in the West.
Putin could be no more demonized even if the Russian military had invaded Ukraine, conquered it, and reincorporated Ukraine in Russia of which Ukraine was part for centuries prior to the Soviet collapse and Ukraine's separation from Russia at Washington's insistence.
The Russian government might want to carefully consider whether Moscow is helping Washington to achieve another victory in Ukraine.
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