The Minsk Agreements - more than "scraps of paper"?

The implementation of the Minsk Agreements has been flawed and failure-prone, but they remain the key politico-legal frameworks of reference for addressing conflict transformation and settlement in East Ukraine. This article investigates how and why the Minsk Agreements' troubled implementation has been shaped by typical or non- typical characteristics of contemporary internationalised and legalised peace agreements. It helps to unpack the Minsk Agreements' "limbo between failing and the imperative of not failing", leading to a discussion of ways to approach the negotiation and implementation of peace agreements from pragmatic perspectives beyond the binary distinction between success and failure.