Posted on 11/27/2022 11:05:58 AM PST by Presbyterian Reporter
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she no longer saw any possibility of influencing Russian President Vladimir Putin toward the end of her term in office.
In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Merkel talked about her final encounters with Putin, saying that throughout her farewell visit to Moscow in August 2021 she felt “in terms of power politics, you’re done,” adding that “for Putin, only power counts.”
She cited the fact that Putin brought Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov along to this last visit as another sign of her crumbling power, as previously they met “often in private,” she said.
Merkel also said that the conflict in Ukraine “didn’t come as a surprise” as she said by 2021 the Minsk agreement, which was struck in 2015 aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, was “hollowed out.”
According to Merkel, she unsuccessfully tried to set up “an independent European discussion format with Putin” in the summer of 2021 together with French President Emmanuel Macron, but realized that she no longer had the clout to assert herself in the European Council either, with the end of her time in office looming.
Merkel also defended herself, saying that together with then-U.S. President Barack Obama, “we tried everything after Russia’s annexation of Crimea [in 2014] to prevent further incursions by Russia into Ukraine and coordinated our sanctions in detail.”
The remarks come soon after she was publicly criticized by former Bundestag president and CDU party colleague Wolfgang Schäuble for not acknowledging mistakes in her Russia policy over the past 16 years.
Germany’s dependence on Russian gas deliveries grew continuously under Merkel’s leadership in the years prior to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Tell more LIES, MerkelIdiot, please. kthx.
Except not fall for the Green Delusion and generate your own power.
Not rely on the US and have some level of National Defense.
Not be a Socialist bitch.
There were some things she could have done...
There was nothing I could do, except buy Russian Oil and Gas. I had to do it. LOL.
Merkel was never going to take action against Putin, a fellow Communist.
Not to mention crippling her army, shutting down coal and nuclear, and not to mention strong arming the Ukrainians into Minsk to begin with. The German government, per what Boris said recently, even actively hoped Ukraine would collapse in days for “humanitarian reasons”, hence Germany’s slow walking of Ukrainian aid.
Trusting Russia was about as stupid as trusting America.
Is Merkel telling us she never read Machiavelli or Clauswitz?
Is she telling us she is that ignorant!!!
Merkel and Macron will bear the burden for Ukraine’s collapse, although it was Biden and Johnson’s that caused it to happen.
Complaining about Putin won’t change that outcome.
what collapse?
“Merkel: There was nothing I could do about Putin”
Well, you COULD HAVE enforced Minsk 2. After all, you agreed to do just that.
in 2022, Putin is getting his ass kicked on the battlefield and Mother Russia is mortally sick economically
The Russians are suffering serious setbacks, close as I can tell. But Russian commanders and politicians are notoriously unconcerned with their troops.
How sick is the Russian economy? It is very difficult to know. They have problems, to be sure. Their economy was not much to start with.
I suspect they have a fairly robust middle of 20th century industrial base.
Germany has a Deep State, too.
And Bumdestag (sic) is Deep State.
Exactly. Trump was right!
Is this Merkel’s version of “What difference does it make now?”
The foolish green hag could have kept their nuclear, coal, and whatever other energy resources they had. Du dumme hexe.
She could have stopped the third world invasion.
When the foreigners left, the industrial asscollapsed apssed
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