I have met Putin 25 times.
And for me, Putin is someone that knows how to measure risk.
There is a rationality in his decision-making.
When I saw him the days before the invasion of Ukraine,
I think emotion was stronger than the rational thinking.
Now he's expressing a very, very deep frustration and
resentment against the West - but not only against the West,
against the past, against history.
Vladimir Putin has rocked the foundations of European security.
This is the story of Putin's path to war,
how and why he wrong-footed the West
through a decade of clashes...
Putin said, "I can get away with it.
"And the Americans won't do anything."
..told by the leaders who've locked horns with him.
We should have stood up to him then.
That is the truth.
And what is happening now in Ukraine is the turning point.
In this episode, how Europe's will was put to the test when, in 2014,
Putin first attacked Ukraine...
I said, "If we don't react now, the Russians will interpret this as
"a carte blanche to do even more".
..and how, when he spied division in the West,
the Russian President pressed home his advantage.
When I confronted him with the fact that there were Russian troops
in Crimea, he said,
"Jose Manuel, these are not the Russian troops.
"If it was really the Armed Forces of Russia," he said to me,
"they could take Kyiv in less than two weeks".
Quite extraordinary.
I remember the summit very clearly because actually, strangely enough,
the Foreign Office didn't think it was particularly important.
But President Grybauskaite of Lithuania,
who was holding the conference, said, "I really want you to come.
"This is important."
And I thought, "Well, I'll come".
Eastern Partnership summits were not always attended by everyone.
This time, everybody came,
including the Prime Minister of Britain,
because we knew this would be a historic moment.
The climax of the summit was due to be a breakthrough trade deal
between Ukraine and the EU.
If President Viktor Yanukovych signed, it would be his country's
biggest step towards the West since leaving the Soviet Union in 1991.
But after a recent trip to Moscow, rumours had started that
he was feeling the heat from Vladimir Putin.
We were staying at a lovely hotel,
and the reception area was full of people having coffee, chatting.
And as I came through the lobby, I saw Yanukovych.
He's a very tall, very imposing figure.
He saw me, nodded to me, and then, came over.
We exchanged pleasantries -
how was he, what was his journey like - and so on.
And after the pleasantries, he says to me,
"You do know that I can't sign the agreement".
He was very embarrassed,
because that agreement had been negotiated for
more than five years.
He tried to present some excuses...
..but it was very clear that he could not do it
because of Russian pressure.
Whatever was said on the trip to Moscow, Yanukovych clearly
came back, er, having had, er,
really having had the frighteners put on him.
I and Merkel, we had been speaking with him just eye-to-eye.
And, because we spoke in Russian,
he was more sincere.
And he gave us some kind of understanding that he was
under pressure, personally under pressure.
Chancellor Merkel told President Yanukovych very clearly,
"We expect you to agree to it.
"We believe that also, this is what your population believes.
"This is what we have been striving for, for the last years, actually.
"And now, you are backing down.
"This is incomprehensible for us."
There was this popular expression in Ukraine about milking two cows.
That Ukraine, to a certain extent, had an opportunity to, sort of,
play both sides off against each other, make sure it was,
kind of, sucking the benefits out of both relationships.
We thought that it's only about financial compensations.
So, we presented him possible solutions, even billions
of financial assistance.
Again, he's not able to sign.
The EU was offering Ukraine huge developmental assistance
for the country...
..but bound up in procedures and spread over many years.
Putin was offering cash literally the next day.
There were rumours of trucks with cash being sent from Ukraine
to Yanukovych's accounts in Russia.
I was pretty clear, from everything I heard from Yanukovych,
that he wasn't serious about a partnership with the EU.
I spoke with President Aliyev, from Azerbaijan, who I always
thought was quite a good reader of the situation,
and he said, "Oh, it's clear to me, Yanukovych and the Ukrainians want
"a better deal from Moscow, so they're flirting with the EU
"to get a better deal from Moscow. But that's what they want."
We said to Yanukovych, "You're the president of your country.
"You were elected on a platform that included the signing of
"this agreement as a centrepiece of your presidency.
"You have chosen, for whatever reasons, not to sign it.
"It's your responsibility now to go home and explain to the people
"who elected you, why you have done that."
In Ukraine's capital, thousands had gathered in
the main square, the Maidan.
When Yanukovych refused to sign, the crowds were watching.
I was very clear - EU is the only way for Ukraine.
European Union is the only future for the Ukrainian people,
and we will never go back to the USSR.
Just two weeks later,
as demonstrations continued in the Maidan,
Yanukovych returned to Moscow to sign a deal with Putin.
At that time, we really had a good relationship with
our Ukrainian colleagues.
We were supporting Ukraine
from the very beginning,
when Soviet Union has disappeared.
That is why the Russian government has allocated a
very serious sum of money.
We hoped that we can make Ukraine stable.
Russia would slash gas prices for Ukraine and loan Yanukovych's
government $15 billion.
In the tug-of-war over Ukraine, Putin looked to be winning.
We were always very clear,
if Ukraine signed up to the association agreement with the EU,
it would be signing up to a lot of things that Putin wouldn't like.
Like the rule of law, like an independent judiciary,
strengthening democratic institutions.
And that, in turn, raises the risk that people
in Russia are going to say, "Look, we need some of this, as well" -
and that's what Putin doesn't want.
Putin was now facing a popular uprising on Russia's doorstep,
as protesters forced back Yanukovych's riot police
and took over the Maidan.
Through the bitter winter, a stream of Western politicians
and diplomats came to visit -
leaving little doubt whose side they were on.
Hello, how are you? Good to see you.
Arriving there, the thing that I remember most is getting out of
the car and the cold air hitting me.
Cos it took your breath away, it was freezing.
This was all kinds of people - younger, older, families, children -
with one message for me, which is,
"We want to sign this agreement".
I was over there to take part at the ministerial meeting,
so we were in Kyiv.
And the hotel was not far from Maidan.
And I saw lots of diplomats.
And really, I didn't believe that they could intervene so openly
into the political process.
Two months into the protests,
Putin had a rare chance to confront the EU's leaders face-to-face.
Putin was very strong on his position.
So, it was a very tough, tough meeting.
Dealing with Putin, one is very conscious of somebody who has power.
He is not brusque, but not friendly.
Putin was pretty clear that he was angry about what was happening.
He said to me that I should not take part in the demonstrations.
I pointed out that my responsibility was to represent the EU,
but I did have to go and talk to people who were
either flying an EU flag literally,
or who were really interested in the relationship with the EU.
What is the right that Putin has to say who should go or
not go to Ukraine?
Ukraine is not part of Russia.
We are, er, free countries!
But that was the position.
Soon, the protesters in Kyiv started moving out of the square
and towards government buildings.
Oleksandr Turchynov, a leading opposition MP,
rushed to see the President.
Before the protesters could retreat,
they came under fire from the security forces.
I was in the Dolomites, on a skiing holiday with my family.
I checked my phone, and there was this video posted by Romanska TV -
a kind of citizen's TV station at the time.
And you could clearly hear the sounds of gunfire.
And not in the air, but into people.
So, I mean, we were about to get dressed for skiing, and...
I had to inform my family, "Sorry, I have to go and be there".
That night, the demonstrators set fire to car tyres,
trying to force back the police.
It had been the deadliest day of the protests so far,
with more than 20 killed and hundreds wounded.
Arriving in Kyiv, Sikorski,
along with the foreign ministers of France and Germany,
headed to meet Yanukovych.
Later.
We told him, "Look, you have to get real.
"This situation cannot be resolved if you don't agree to go before
"your term of office expires."
Erm, and he sort of went white,
and went to the next room to make a foreign call.
Yanukovych didn't tell us where the call was originating,
or where he was calling.
But his associates told us that he was calling Moscow.
And, to our astonishment, when he returned, er, he agreed.
For the Ukrainian President, it was a humiliating defeat.
He's had to give up many of the powers he took in controversial
changes to the constitution,
and he'll be gone by the end of the year.
When we were entering this building 24 hours ago,
there was black smoke, there was the sound of gunfire and of detonations.
Now we have fair weather - which shows that God is looking
with, um, favour on this agreement.
The following day, Ukraine's parliament started trying
to put the deal into practice.
The House passed the legislation,
and we were trying to find Yanukovych.
He has to sign it into the law.
No-one knew where Yanukovych was.
I remember ringing up and talking to the Deputy Foreign Minister
at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, and saying, "What's going on?".
And the guy on the other end of the phone said,
"We don't know where President Yanukovych is".
In the middle of the night,
Yanukovych had flown by helicopter to the East of Ukraine,
near the Russian border.
And on the streets of Kyiv, the thousands of security forces
who'd been battling the protesters had disappeared.
We were worried that now we had a vacuum.
I thought it was really important to get to Kyiv to talk to everybody,
and to see what we could do.
You, sort of, felt the heaviness.
You saw people standing around in the streets with guns.
Everyone was really, kind of, taking in what was going on.
Somebody whispered in my ear,
"Do you think it felt like this in 1917, in the Russian Revolution?"
And although, of course it was entirely different,
I think what they were referring to was that sense that everything
was about to change, and nobody quite knew where it would go.
On the night that Yanukovych fled Kyiv,
Vladimir Putin was busy hosting the biggest international event
Russia had staged in years - the Sochi Winter Olympics.
By now, Yanukovych had reached Crimea,
a peninsula in the South of Ukraine.
It had deep ties to Russia,
and was home to its Black Sea naval fleet.
Putin ordered his special forces to escort Yanukovych to Russia.
But that wasn't all.
He was about to make his most audacious move since taking office.
We started to hear that something was afoot in Crimea.
By that time, in a number of Ukraine's bigger cities,
we'd seen efforts on the part of Russian-leaning groups
to storm public offices, to kind of take over the town hall.
And, to be quite honest, our first reports to London were
that we understood that something similar was happening in Crimea.
In fact, Armed Forces were appearing across the peninsula.
These "little green men", as they came to be called,
wore unmarked uniforms and carried modern Russian weapons...
In Washington, the President was briefed on the situation.
So far, he'd kept the crisis in Ukraine at arms' length.
But Putin had now crossed a line.
Good afternoon, everybody.
We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements
taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine.
Just days after the world came to Russia for the Olympic Games,
it would invite the condemnation of nations around the world.
And there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.
..Who those forces are in Crimea? Are they Russian forces?
Obama called in his top advisers.
The President was keen for action - not military action,
but economic action - which can be very powerful if the US is doing it.
And the natural thing was to turn to sanctions.
But we also wanted to be joined together with allies in Europe.
And we in the US knew the economic costs of sanctions on Russia,
and of any counter-sanctions by Russia would be felt
much more strongly in Europe than in the United States.
Obama would let the Europeans take the lead.
The British Prime Minister was one of the first
to speak directly to Putin.
The thing with Putin is you've always known he mourns
the loss of the Soviet Union.
He wants to recover territory where he can.
And I said to him, "Look, you know this is illegitimate action.
"Ukraine is a legitimate country. It has its own borders."
Cameron said what had happened was just completely unacceptable.
One country had literally seized a chunk of territory from another
country and claimed it for itself.
And when was the last time that had happened in Europe?
Maybe...maybe the Second World War, and it hadn't happened since.
And Putin's response was that Crimea basically historically had
always been part of Russia and was their territory.
"This is my backyard, keep out of it."
An emergency summit of EU leaders was called.
Cameron arrived with a draft proposal for wide-ranging
sanctions against Russia.
I was clear that we were not going to send troops to Ukraine.
In your heart, you wanted to do more, but in your head,
you knew, you know, we must not make this a Russia-NATO conflict.
But I thought we could do everything we could to try and make
the consequences bad for Russia by having sanctions,
travel bans, asset freezes.
We need to send a very clear message to the Russian government
that what has happened is unacceptable.
There were two difficult issues in it.
Number one - if you talked about energy,
a lot of European countries, particularly central European,
but also Germany had quite a heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas.
And second, some European countries -
notably again, Germany and Italy -
sold a lot of stuff to Russia.
Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary,
was saying that it was difficult for him to accept sanctions because
if we adopted sanctions, there would be counter-sanctions from Russia.
Merkel was quite supportive,
but kind of flagged up the energy was difficult.
The reaction of Europe at the time was very upsetting.
The cheap energy was so comfortable
and so addictive that they were not able to overstep
their pragmatic policies.
I said very clearly, "No more business as usual.
"We can't leave this Council without a clear declaration that
"what's happened is wrong."
That's always the problem with sanctions taken
by a group of countries.
The countries want to adopt sanctions,
but they don't want their sectors or where they have stronger
interests to be very much affected.
The European Council threatened sanctions
unless Putin withdrew his forces.
These would target a small number of individuals,
but none of Russia's key economic sectors,
and nothing would happen right away.
I'll answer every question you ask.
I was disappointed, yes.
But I never went public accusing our Western friends.
I am well aware of Putin's playbook,
to split unity in the EU
and to play on these differences.
So, I never went public, but I was very tough
behind the closed doors.
Ten days later, with Putin's backing,
a referendum was held in Crimea.
Officially, 93% voted in favour of joining the Russian Federation -
a figure widely rejected by the international community.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
For Putin, this didn't matter.
The same week, Obama was in Europe with his own message for Putin.
America's got a whole lot of challenges.
Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of
its immediate neighbours...
..not out of strength, but out of weakness.
He said that Russia is just a regional power -
and this is not helpful, because it feeds on resentment.
And for me, Putin is essentially a product of resentment
because of the decline, and also, humiliation of Russia after
the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What's the need of humiliating, or creating more resentment
in someone like Putin?
It perhaps inflamed Putin that he said it.
But that was how he saw it.
This is not the biggest threat that we face.
This is a threat that we're going to deal with,
and that we are dealing with,
but we don't need to get too worked up about it.
When Putin met the new President of the European Commission
months later, Obama's words still rankled.
We were discussing Crimea.
Putin repeated his Crimean poem,
saying that this was a part of Russia,
and of the former Soviet Union.
And for the very first time, I noted that something had changed.
When it came to Ukraine, he suddenly expressed himself in
a far more brutal way than was usually the case.
He's hardened his position. He's very aggressive.
He's very revisionist in his approach to history.
He repeatedly said, "Ukraine is Russian".
And the sentence that he always brought up, is that the sentence
of President Obama that Russia would be only "a regional power".
And he really felt hurt and insulted by that.
Putin was about to face another humiliation.
These leaders huddled around a small table decided that
they would suspend taking part in G8 meetings
until Russia changed course.
Russia was kicked out of the club for the world's leading economies
as the G8 became the G7.
These are industrialised countries,
and we clearly have seen that
they treat Russia like an outsider,
like the desire is just to leave Russia as an agrarian country with
a lot of mineral resources - like Bulgaria, for instance.
We were always on the periphery.
It's not a place for us.
In Ukraine, the situation was threatening to explode.
Crimea had been taken with little resistance.
But in the Eastern region of Donbas, Ukrainian forces were now being
attacked by Russian-backed separatists.
That summer, France would host celebrations for the 70th
anniversary of the D-Day landings.
Putin's invitation had been in doubt.
But the French President,
spotting the chance for a diplomatic breakthrough,
arranged a dinner at the Elysee.
Hollande pressed Putin on the need for peace talks.
The next day's celebrations in Normandy would be a perfect
opportunity to speak face-to-face
with Ukraine's newly-elected President, Petro Poroshenko.
President Putin did not recognise this election.
So, we had a raising tension on one hand,
and on the other hand, no contact.
So, we thought, "Why shouldn't we try to bring them together"?
He seemed to be positive, but we had no guarantee.
So, we had to organise this in a... kind of...uncertainty.
The next day, Putin joined 19 other heads of state in Normandy.
For Ukraine's new President -
a billionaire who'd made his money selling chocolate -
the pressure was on.
Of course, all the world leaders were in Normandy for D-Day.
And I was surprised that the line of the leaders who want
to shake hands with Obama,
President of the United States, was significantly shorter than
the line of the leaders
who want to shake hands with Putin.
And then, I see how difficult it would be for me,
for Ukrainians to stop Putin.
We had 20 minutes before the huge lunch with all
the heads of state and government,
including Her Majesty the Queen.
We couldn't afford to be late, because normally, you do not tell
the Queen of England that, "Sorry, we are a bit late.
"You have to wait 15 minutes."
That doesn't work.
Putin hated the idea to have this meeting.
He tried to do his best to avoid it.
And it happened while Francois Hollande take his hands
and accompany him to the room.
Hollande had enlisted the German Chancellor's support.
We got together in this typical French chateau,
and they were sitting there, it was very crisp.
When Putin entered, he said, "OK, 10-15 minutes, no more".
"Why?"
"Because I have a very busy schedule."
"OK." I started with the...
..demand for the immediate liberation of the Crimea.
Putin said in Russian, he said, "Ikh tam net".
Which means, "There is no Russian troops there".
And then, Angela said, "Volodiya" - she said it in Russian.
"Don't be stupid, so, come on."
After less than 20 minutes, the leaders left for the lunch.
Nothing substantive had been agreed.
A month later, the US President had a scheduled phone call with Putin.
Ukraine was top of the agenda.
Putin was saying we've both got interests in Ukraine,
and Obama was saying words to the effect of, "Vladimir,
"I don't have a national security interest in Ukraine itself.
"But we have a national security interest in
"the sovereignty of Ukraine."
And at some point, Putin said something about things happening.
The President of Russia reported to President Obama that
a plane crash had just taken place in the Donbas region.
None of us knew what he was talking about.
There was a sense of, "Oh, there's a war going on".
Maybe a helicopter has crashed.
Maybe some other crash has taken place.
I left at that phone call and went to run a meeting.
And halfway through it, one of my staff members passes me a note
that says, "You better get back to your office.
"There are suitcases and body parts falling from the sky in Donbas."
A Boeing jet, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17,
had come down in the East of Ukraine,
about 30 miles from the Russian border.
The first reports suggested it had been shot out of the sky.
Literally within a few hours,
we hear from the security intelligence agencies that the
Americans are pretty sure that the missile came out of
separatist-held regions of Donbas,
and that it had been supplied by the Russians.
I had a call with Putin where, you know, he just lied.
He must've seen the same evidence as me.
He probably knew more than me.
And this was what we used to call in, sort of, Foreign Office terms,
it was the Russian approach of deny and lie.
It was clear that it was a mistake.
But the so-called international community, which means US policy
or European Union, the next day, put the blame on us.
This is another step to drive the wedge
and to make this wedge larger and larger
between West and Russia.
With separatists controlling the crash site,
investigators weren't able to collect evidence
or recover victims' bodies.
The vast majority of the 298 people on board had been Dutch nationals.
Four days after the disaster,
the Dutch Foreign Minister attended a special meeting of
the United Nations.
Just for one minute, I'm not addressing you as
representatives of your countries,
but as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, just imagine that
you first get the news that your husband was killed.
And then, within 2-3 days, you see images of some thug
removing the wedding band from their hands.
I thought if I could create the right momentum in
the security council, with all the others putting pressure on Russia,
it would be very difficult for them to refuse at least access,
so that we could, you know, bring the remains home.
I call on the international community on this Security Council,
on anyone with influence on the situation on the ground,
allow us to bring the victims' remains home to their loved ones.
They deserve to be home.
Frans Timmermans' speech struck a chord.
Despite Russian resistance, the UN agreed a resolution demanding
emergency services be given access to the crash site.
He now wanted to make sure that Putin would pay.
It's impossible for me to put into words how the Dutch nation
mourned this and how furious people were,
and how sad people were.
And that needed to find a political outlet.
We needed to do something with that.
24 hours after addressing the UN,
Timmermans confronted his fellow EU foreign ministers.
He wanted sanctions to hit Russia's key sectors like energy and banking,
even if this meant European economies suffered.
I said, "If we don't react now, the Russians will interpret this as,
"sort of, a carte blanche to do even more".
Straight away, it was clear that there were two extremes in the room.
That, on the one hand, the Poles,
the Baltic states, as usual,
taking a very, very tough line on Russia.
At the other end of the scale,
some of the Southern Europeans being much more reluctant to move forward.
I said, "Surely you don't want to be the one to prevent
"our unity from being clear.
"How are you going to explain to your media that you don't
"want us to impose sanctions?"
Most countries didn't, and probably still don't
feel threatened by Russia.
When a Lithuanian, or even a Pole says something about Russia,
they are sceptical.
But when a really cool, rational Dutchman says it,
it has a greater effect on the western Europeans.
There were member states who, I think, at that time were feeling
we'd done enough,
or maybe it was time to relax our position.
Nobody suggested that, having listened to Frans.
I think we have a good result,
one that should be satisfying to Holland, to the Dutch public,
one that should make President Putin realise that this time
we are for real, this is serious.
The EU, together with America,
imposed the toughest sanctions Russia had faced since the Cold War,
targeting its energy, arms, and finance sectors.
But some thought they should go even further.
In the Pentagon, discussions had started about whether the US should
send Ukraine its much-lauded Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The most important thing for us was to deter the Russians.
And so, we thought the Javelin system was perfect because
they are defensive, but they're lethal.
They will kill the people in the tank.
So the body bags go back to Russia,
and Russia has a political problem.
Farkas took her pitch to the White House,
where she met Obama's top Russia advisers.
We were very concerned about pouring fuel on the fire.
I said, "Let's not move up a ladder of escalation
"that we are unlikely to win".
I said that Russia has a border of 1,000 miles with Ukraine -
more than 1,000 miles.
Russia has uncontested military superiority -
why should we play to Russia's strength?
We should play to our strength by hitting them with sanctions.
We already had a sense that sanctions weren't going
to do it in the short run.
I deemed the situation as urgent enough to merit, you know,
essentially exacting a price in the form of,
sorry to say, Russian lives.
That price would be the only thing that would cause
Vladimir Putin to stop and think.
I don't think that Vladimir Putin is the kind of leader who's gonna say,
"Well, I just lost 100 soldiers. I'm going to stop."
The United States did not want to be going to war with Russia.
And so, there was concern about what would be provocative.
We knew that the Europeans were taking the lead in talks
with Putin, and so the United States suddenly weighing in with weapons
would've been consequential, and seemed to be problematic.
The violence in Ukraine was getting worse.
Reports were emerging of Russian troops crossing the border
to fight alongside the separatists.
Ukraine's President now had his first face-to-face meeting
with Putin since Normandy.
The fighting had increased,
they had just captured ten Russian soldiers.
There were huge implications for how this might go in the future.
I said, "Vladimir, this is your soldiers on my soil.
"And we have the evidence for the whole world."
And the Putin answer was,
"No, no, no, this is not our soldiers".
"Vladimir, this is the ID tag of your soldiers.
"And we have dozens and dozens of them."
"No, no, no, this is not mine, I don't know how you..."
"OK, we have the orders that they are regular soldiers
"of the regular army."
"I double check - no, they are on holiday."
"We called to their parents, we called to their wives,
"and they said that they are in regular army."
"No, because they were in regular army, but they just lost
"their way when they're driving in the Russian territory."
The leaders of the European Union said,
"Putin, OK, stop. Stop, stop."
Poroshenko looked pretty drawn and was visibly shaken.
It was clear that the bigger issues were nowhere near resolution.
With no Western military support, Ukraine's forces were being
overwhelmed by the rebels armed by Russia.
By February, it was looking desperate.
A critical battle was raging around the city of Debaltseve -
a stronghold which, if breached,
would be disastrous for Ukraine.
The French and German leaders called an emergency summit.
As they arrived,
Poroshenko grabbed a private word
with the German Chancellor.
Poroshenko told her very clearly the defence forces are defeated,
they barely can hold the line.
If the Russians break through,
they can go all the way to Kyiv.
So, he needed - he needed an agreement.
In a diplomat's life, you have very few occasions where you have
directly at stake the life of - literally the lives
of thousands of people.
If you fail, if you have no compromise,
people can be killed on the one hand.
But on the other hand, you cannot accept any compromise because
by definition, this is the pressure they are trying to put on you.
So, in a small corner of this palace,
these negotiations took place.
A lot of people in there, a big table in the middle
where all during the night,
food was brought in so that it was used as a buffet.
In front of Putin, Poroshenko wasn't going to reveal
how vulnerable his forces were.
I said, "What you want?
"Do you want to kill more Ukrainians?"
I said, "You have the wrong information.
"Our soldiers is one of the best,
"and we don't give you any chance to do that."
I said, "I think that the first important message
"should be immediate and unconditional ceasefire".
Who can be against ceasefire?
Putin appeared to relent.
He agreed to an immediate ceasefire,
as long as Ukraine's forces also pulled back.
All of a sudden, the Russians backtracked on a very important part
and that was the timing for the ceasefire.
With the talks on the verge of collapse,
Hollande and Merkel took Putin aside.
The compromise was that the ceasefire would be
delayed for 48 hours.
I was worried about these 48 hours.
We had guarantees, verbal guarantees, but we were not
100% sure that this opportunity would not be used to attack.
A glimmer of hope to end the bloodshed.
The warring parties in the Ukraine conflict finally reached a deal,
paving the way for peace after ten months of fighting.
Even after the 48 hours was up,
separatist forces continued their assault on Debaltseve.
Five days later, they took the city.
Russian forces didn't advance any further into Ukraine.
But the fighting in the East never stopped,
and Crimea remained under Russian control.
Do you know what is the achievement, despite the fact that Russia
did not fulfil one tiny thing from Minsk?
These documents give Ukraine eight years
for building up army,
for building up economy, and for building up global
pro-Ukrainian, anti-Putin coalition.
Three years later, Putin took centre stage at
the opening of a bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.
The bridge was deemed a violation of international law,
and the US and EU hit the companies who built it with sanctions.
But Putin wasn't deterred.
Putin once said to me, "Why are you defending Ukraine?
"Ukraine is a creation of the CIA and of the European Commission."
And I said to him, "Look, if it was the European Commission
"that had created Ukraine, I would probably know about it".
So, it's amazing that, in Putin's mind,
Ukraine was an artificial creation by others.
And I think that's part of the problem.
I blame the West, us.
We are guilty that we allowed him to grow to such a level of intimidation.
Next time - buoyed by his success in Crimea,
Putin asserts Russia's power in the Middle East.
Putin doesn't care about the loss of life.
He doesn't care about the damage he inflicts,
he doesn't care about what he does to civilians.