This is John Batchel, a conversation with Professor Serhi Polki of Harvard University.

I've spoken to the professor many times over the years.

He's a professor of Ukrainian history.

We spoke of his book on Yalta, probably more than 10 years ago.

And we spoke of his book on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Now we speak of the Russo-Ukrainian war ongoing. Professor writes extremely carefully about the predicate for this, the battle between

Keeffe and Moscow. In this passage, we come to Minsk, Minsk II, agreed upon by the powers in 2015 and yet not acted on, and why.

And is it still available to act on?

It's a partition, it's appeasement, but it would stop the war.

What is to be done?

Here's Sergei Ploki on Minsk, Minsk, Minst 2, and who goes first?

More of this later.

Well, absolutely.

And that was something that the United States, Germany, the NATO allies in Europe, we are trying to implement and

implement very often in the Russian version of the agreements, the way how Russia read those

agreements.

The key sticking point there was what should come first in the implementation of the Minsk

agreements, either elections on the territory controlled by Russia or Ukraine taking control of its own borders and then conducts elections on the basis of

its laws and under its control.

Russia insisted on elections first under the Russian control, military control,

and then taking this region, using them as Trojan force, putting them into the body of the political body of Ukraine,

and really destabilizing Ukraine, precluding the situation in which Ukraine would be able to apply to the

...