Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko said that Russia would have faced catastrophic consequences without a special military operation to protect the Donbass. Former French President and German Chancellor Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel for eight years deceived Moscow in their commitment to the Minsk agreements, she said.Matviyenko noted that now it has become even more obvious that a special operation in Ukraine was inevitable.
Earlier, Hollande admitted that the M Belarus agreements helped Ukraine buy time to build up its military power.