Merkel justifies Russia policy: ‘Only power counts for Putin’ North Korea attacks South Korean president Yoon

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her policy towards Russia and Ukraine. She wished for a quieter time after her departure, “because I have had a lot to do with Ukraine”. But the Russian attack did not come as a surprise, the CDU politician told the news magazine “Spiegel”.

“The Minsk agreement was eroded. In the summer of 2021, after Presidents Biden and Putin met, I wanted to re-establish an independent European discussion format with Putin with Emmanuel Macron in the EU Council,” Merkel explains. “But I no longer had the strength to stand up for myself, because everyone knew: it will be gone in the fall.”

Merkel officially left office in December 2021. “Mirror” reporter Alexander Osang accompanied the former chancellor in her first year of retirement. A few months before the end of her term in office, in August, Merkel traveled to Moscow for a farewell visit to Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. “The feeling was very clear: ‘In terms of power politics, you’re done.’ For Putin, only power counts,” said the former chancellor of the news magazine.

“It was time for a new approach”

Merkel stressed that she does not regret not running for chancellorship again. “Someone new had to do it.” On foreign policy, by the end of her term she had not made an inch of progress on many of the things her administration had tried again and again. “Not just in terms of Ukraine. Transnistria and Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia, Syria and Libya. It was time for a new approach.”

Merkel is currently writing a book about her 16 years in the Chancellery, together with her longtime office manager Beate Baumann. She told the “Spiegel” that in her spare time she also finds the opportunity to watch series like “The Crown” and “Babylon Berlin”, or films like “Munich” about the role of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for the Second World War. World War. War .

(t-online, lw)