The revelation by Merkel that the whole Minsk agreements were nothing but lies just to buy time to prepare the West for war against Russia on Ukrainian territory will only boost the Russian peoples resolve to win this war by supporting Putin all the way. The fact that Russia’s preparation for this war was only to fight Ukraine which would have been an easy task, but got blindsided when whole of NATO and the collective West were also to be involved in this war, hence the fact where this war is today with millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. The Minsk agreements would have given Russia less than what they have today, and for Ukraine, they too would have lost less than what they have today, a country in ruins.
It appears that Russia is now using the winter period to regroup itself to prepare for the next round to take this war in Spring to NATO and the collective West in Ukraine to the next level which will favour Russia far more than it has so far to their satisfaction. NATO and the collective West has done all they can for Ukraine to fight the Russian forces short of officially putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, and to avoid WWIII on steroids, boots on the ground is very much unlikely to happen. What will become of Ukraine after Spring will be decided by Russia and not the collective West, however, it will be the responsibility of the collective West to financially support a broken country Ukraine as it was their desire to pick a fight with Russia in Ukraine.
If NATO and the collective West has not beaten Russia in Ukraine after 10 months of fighting the unprepared Russia to fight the collective West, then there is no chance for the collective West to win against Russia once it is prepared to fight the collective West in Ukraine.
An analogy can be used here to describe Russia with an old joke that, “how can a woman bleed for 3 days and not die”! Well, not only she does not die, but often the case is the she goes on to live much longer than the man!