Merkle and Hollande both stated they had no intention of supporting the Minsk accords, they were to buy time for Ukraine to arm up, train and prepare for conflict with Russia. The first Minsk agreement was drafted in 2014.
The CIA and US State Department overthrew the democratically elected pro-Russian government in the Maidan coup; including locking up unarmed government supports in a building, and burning them alive.
Since the Maidan coup in 2014, Ukraine had been denying ethnic Russians their language, schools, churches, and other rights, and then started shelling residential areas in the eastern territories Donbas and Luhansk, until Russia acted to stop it.
The US, NATO and EU did not engage with Russia in negotiations as that was not part of the plan (see Minsk accords above), the plan was to use Ukraine, and a promise of NATO and EU membership, military training and build-up of equipment in Ukraine to pressure Russia to respond; Even after the special military operation began, Ukraine was seeking peace, with Turkiye mediation; those talks broke down after Boris Johnson met with Zelensky.
Ukraine, Zelensky and the Ukrainian people were played by NATO and the EU; used as pawns to provoke Russia in what Vicky "the cow" Nuland and other chickenhawks and neocons thought would weaken Russia militarily, economically, and politically, they actually thought Russians would rise up overthrow Putin! Instead, a majority of Russians see the conflict instigated by NATO and EU as an existential threat, and many want Russia to be even more aggressive.
Given Ukrainian attacks inside of Russia, and what we are learning about Ukrainian support of the Isis terrorist massacre, Putin has stated that will Russia not only take additional ethnic Russian territories in the east and southwest, Russia will go even further in Ukraine territory to create a buffer zone.
Instead, they failed, and the West is slowly losing interest, while they continue to launder taxpayer money to "fund" Ukraine, Russia continues push westward and only the deployment of NATO forces in Ukraine will slow down the Russian advance.
I can't wait to see the people of Ukraine realize they were used by the West to their own destruction. Remember when the US government told us with absolute certainty that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a lie? That's what the US and its' allies did to Ukraine.
Too bad, most of the Ukrainian men are dead or wounded so they won't be much of a threat to the West, but I fully expect Ukrainian terrorists to attack the West after the war is over and they realize the West destroyed them