TIME alone will decide whether the deal hammered out in Minsk will bring a lasting peace and reconciliation for the people of Ukraine.

Thousands of people have perished needlessly in the past year as a direct result of the European Union and the US having meddled recklessly in the situation there.

Both remain stuck in the cold-war era and are determined to isolate Russia.

This means reneging on past agreements not to extend the sway of Nato to the borders of Russia while drawing as many former Soviet republics as possible into the grip of the EU.

Trading links between Ukraine, with its heavy industries in the east of the country, and Russia remain substantial, although threatened by the determination of the EU to absorb Ukraine and weaken its historical links with its eastern neighbour.

When former president Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign a document of association with the EU for fear of losing Ukraine’s relationship with Russia, Brussels encouraged not only mass demonstrations but a violent revolt.

Global mass media dismissed Yanukovych’s claims that the supposedly peaceful Euromaidan occupation was accompanied by well-organised armed units that opened fire on police and also on anti-government demonstrators to induce chaos and provoke more protests.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton at the time that this was widely spoken of in Kiev, but neither the EU nor US took it seriously.

BBC journalist Gabriel Gatehouse has belatedly provided an alternative narrative to the global media fairy tales, having interviewed a self-confessed Maidan sniper.

As protests and chaos grew, Yanukovych fled the country and a new leadership took over, emboldened by EU and US backing.

At the heart of the cutting edge of the Maidan movement were far-right paramilitary groups, declaring as their inspiration wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera who led pogroms against Jews and Poles and collaborated with the nazi invaders against the Red Army.

Their crimes of burning trade unionists to death in Odessa, terrorising journalists and entering the Verkhovna Rada parliament to attack deputies are well-documented.

To describe last year’s events is not to remain rooted in the past but to explain why so many Russian speakers reject rule from Kiev and have set up their own people’s republics.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claims to back a ceasefire, yet he insists that the Minsk document says nothing about local autonomy in eastern Ukraine.

He has threatened martial law and demands control of the border with Russia so as to cut off the anti-fascist resistance from its supporters.

Poroshenko refers only to Russians in the context of foreign fighters, even though he knows that the Azov battalion, which spearheads pro-Kiev forces, has recruited far-right elements from across Europe.

The Azov is not officially part of the Ukrainian armed forces, calling itself a volunteer unit, but it is supplied and financed by the Kiev government.

Its ultra-nationalist ideology and past record will caution the Russian anti-fascist resistance in Donetsk and Lugansk to be on their guard against perfidious actions.

If Ukraine is to remain a single entity, it can only be on the basis of recognising the country’s complicated history and its multinational nature.

Most important of all, Brussels must renounce its insistence on 100 per cent victory in the form of EU membership for Kiev.

That would shatter centuries-old links with Russia and expose Russian speakers to second-class citizenship at best and national oppression at worst.