Merkel reports significant moment during Putin's farewell visit: "Feeling was clear"
Created: 11/25/2022 11:03 am
By: Hannes Niemeyer
Angela Merkel met Vladimir Putin several times during her tenure.
The ex-Chancellor now recalled her “farewell visit” to Russia.
Berlin – Germany and the Ukraine War.
The Federal Republic's handling of the conflict and its effects is hotly debated.
The focus is not only on the reactions of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his government, ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel is also regularly asked the question: Were mistakes made in dealing with Russia during your term in office?
Merkel herself recently commented on Vladimir Putin and his brutal war of aggression - and in doing so made ex-Ukraine ambassador Melnyk foam.
Now the former chancellor has once again defended her policy towards Russia and Ukraine.
Since she had dealt a lot with Ukraine, she wished for a more peaceful time after her departure, Merkel told the news magazine
Spiegel
.
She also worked on a solution to the end and tried around the summer of 2021 to work with French President Emmanuel Macron to create an independent European format for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"But I no longer had the strength to assert myself because everyone knew: It will be gone in the fall."
Merkel on a "farewell visit" to Putin: Lavrov's scene indicative of the chancellor
Merkel officially left office in December 2021.
A few months earlier, in August, she had traveled to Moscow for a farewell visit to see Putin.
"The feeling was very clear: 'In terms of power politics, you're through.'
Only power counts for Putin,” said the former Chancellor.
It was significant that Putin also brought his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to this last meeting.
Otherwise you would have met more often in private.
The Russian attack came as no surprise.
The federal government led by Merkel, together with France, had mediated between Ukraine and Russia in the so-called Normandy format in order to seek a solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine - there, Ukrainian government troops have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
Merkel was instrumental in the 2015 Minsk Agreement, but the peace plan was never fully implemented.
A few months after the end of Merkel's term in office, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year.
During her tenure, Angela Merkel met Vladimir Putin more often.
Now she remembered her "farewell visit".
© Sergey Guneev / Imago
According to the
Spiegel
report, Merkel believes that at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 and also later in the negotiations in Minsk, she bought the time that Ukraine was able to use to better resist a Russian attack.
Ukraine is now a stronger, more resilient country.
Back then, Merkel was certain that she would have been run over by Putin's troops, according to
Der Spiegel
.
Merkel's Russia and Ukraine policy: renewed criticism from the CDU
Merkel also said that she did not regret not running again as a candidate for chancellor in the federal elections.
Domestically, it was overripe that someone new approached.
In terms of foreign policy, at the end of her term in office, she had not made any progress on so many things that her government had tried again and again.
“Not only in terms of Ukraine.
Transnistria and Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia, Syria and Libya.
It was time for a new approach.”
Merkel had been criticized by Ukrainian and German politicians, among others, for her Russia policy.
During her time in government, she recognized that Putin wanted to weaken and divide Europe, but she drew the wrong conclusions and only reacted with "soft power", said the CDU foreign politician Roderich Kiesewetter.
also read
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“There are intrigues around”
On Russian state TV: military expert attacks Baerbock
In addition to Russia, a possible interference by Belarus in the war is also repeatedly in focus.
Belarus ruler Lukashenko gives Putin a clear no.
(han/dpa)
