Former German chancellor claims the countries’ opposition to negotiations with Moscow fuelled Russian ‘aggression’.
Poland and the Baltic states bear some of the blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Angela Merkel has suggested.
In an interview, Mrs Merkel, who served as German chancellor from 2005 to 2021, claimed that Polish and Baltic resistance to EU-led negotiations with Vladimir Putin in 2021 indirectly contributed to his “aggression” a year later.
“In June 2021, I felt that Putin was no longer taking the Minsk Agreement seriously, and that’s why I wanted a new format where we could speak directly with Putin as the European Union,” Mrs Merkel told the Hungarian news outlet Partizan, whilst visiting Viktor Orban, the country’s increasingly autocratic and Kremlin-friendly prime minister.
The former chancellor was referring to the Minsk accords, a series of failed international treaties that had sought to end the Donbas war between Ukraine and Russia – a prelude to the February 2022 illegal invasion.
“Not everyone supported this, above all the Baltic states, but Poland was also against it,” she said, adding that those countries were “afraid” that there would be no common agreement among EU states on how to tackle Russia.
“In any case, it did not happen, I left office, and then Putin’s aggression began,” she said.
The former Christian Democrats (CDU) leader also suggested that the Covid pandemic had also played a part in Putin deciding to launch a full-scale invasion.
She said lockdown meant that regular in-person negotiations between EU leaders and Putin “could not happen” and added: “If you cannot meet, if you cannot discuss differences face to face, you won’t find new compromises.”
Her comments will probably raise eyebrows in Warsaw and the Baltic region, which has long been frustrated by what it sees as German complacency over the major security threat posed by Russia.
Mrs Merkel’s visit to Hungary was also to promote her memoir, Freedom, which is largely an attempt to justify her most controversial policies, such as opening the country’s borders to a million refugees in 2015 and allowing Germany to become hugely dependent on cheap Russian gas.
It also contains an anecdote where she claimed that Putin tried to scare her by bringing his black Labrador, Koni, to a meeting in 2007, knowing that the then-chancellor had a fear of dogs.
Polish anger
The intervention by Mrs Merkel has caused anger in Poland, as one former prime minister suggested that her complacency towards Russia caused major damage to European security.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the former Polish prime minister, said: “Angela Merkel, with her thoughtless interview, proved that she is at the forefront of the most harmful German politicians to Europe in the last century.”
German-Polish relations are already under strain because of a row over border security, which was triggered after the German government ramped up migrant checks, forcing asylum seekers back into Poland.
The new policy, imposed by Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, caused outrage in Polish border communities who feared that asylum seekers would get stuck on their side of the frontier.
This led to groups of vigilantes patrolling Poland’s borders with Germany over the summer, amid claims that German police vans were being used to drop off asylum seekers on the Polish side.
Poland has also long been frustrated by what it views as Germany’s naive, complacent attitude towards Russia, under both Mrs Merkel and her centre-Left successor, Olaf Scholz.
Mr Merz, who was sworn in last May, has vowed to adopt a much tougher stance on Moscow. He has already passed historic reforms in Germany that, in effect, allow unlimited public spending on major defence projects in Europe.
The Merz government has also created a €400bn (£347bn) special fund to rebuild Germany’s road and rail network, so that it can be used for the rapid transit of Nato tanks and troops in the event of war with Russia.
