Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that she fought hard while in office to keep the situation in Ukraine from deteriorating to its current level, but she does not blame herself for failing to do so.
‘That’s a tremendous shame it didn’t work out, but I don’t blame myself for not trying,’ Merkel said of the Minsk accord with Russia in 2014. She talked during an ARD-televised interview with German journalist and novelist Alexander Osang.
Merkel, who led the West’s sanctions against Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014, said the Minsk deal had stabilised the situation and given Ukraine time to develop into what it is today.
‘What would have happened if no one bothered in 2014 and Putin just kept going? I don’t want to know anything about it,’ she continued.
Merkel said there was no justification for Russia’s ‘brutal disrespect for international law’ in Ukraine, and she had been opposed to let Ukraine into NATO because she wanted to avoid escalation with Russia and Ukraine was not ready.
‘That was not the Ukraine of today… The country was unstable and rife with corruption’, she stated.
A native Russian speaker After growing up in the former communist East Germany, Merkel has come under fire from the US and others for her backing for the Nord Stream 2 gas project, which is intended to supply Russian gas straight to Germany.
The German chancellor defended her trade policies with Russia, claiming that Europe and Russia were neighbours who couldn’t ignore one other.
She stated that she had wrestled with questions concerning the former Soviet Union throughout her presidency, but that it was impossible to end the Cold War.
‘We just failed to create a security architecture to prevent that,’ she continued.
Merkel, a conservative, issued a brief comment during Russia’s invasion in February, but her silence subsequently has raised eyebrows.
She was chastised in April for travelling to Italy quickly after learning about atrocities in Bucha, near Kyiv, rather than accepting an invitation to visit Ukraine.
The mass-selling Bild daily headed an article on her visit, ‘Invited to Bucha, Driven to Florence.’
During the hour-and-a-half interview, Merkel, 67, said she knew the trip would be divisive, but she wanted to make it obvious that she was no longer the Chancellor.
‘This vacation was critical to my process of disconnecting from politics.’
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