I knew very well President Putin’s intentions. He always expressed them both publicly and in confidential conversations. I knew that we were not dealing with a friend of Europe. The question was only how to react. My answer was not to have any more relations with Putin, but rather to try to prevent the invasion of Ukraine through negotiations, sometimes with a lot of controversy, in which I never used puns.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged from a long period of silence. The iron lady, who led the most powerful state in the European Union for 16 years, and who has left a strong mark on world politics, was one reason for the almost total disappearance of Angela Merkel: for two years she dedicated herself to writing her memoirs with Beate Baumann, the woman who has been her shadow in politics since 1992. “Freedom” is the title of the book, which comes out on Tuesday in thirty countries. In the book we find her memoirs, the GDR, Putin, Trump, Berlusconi, but it is also her defense, a response to the accusations: and she seems to have no regrets.
ON POWER
For me, power is the ability to shape something. Having a majority, making decisions that leave a mark together with the people who have received their mandates. Building majorities, uniting them, finding compromises. This is power. In her memoirs, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has once again justified her policy towards Russia and her opposition to Ukraine’s membership in NATO, German media reported on Thursday. “The entry of a new member into NATO is not only aimed at increasing the security of the new member, but also the security of the entire alliance must be taken into account,” the weekly Die Zeit quoted excerpts from Angela Merkel’s memoirs entitled “Freiheit” (“Freedom”), which is due to be presented next week. The passage refers in particular to Angela Merkel’s policy towards Russia, which has been frequently criticized in the meantime, and her alleged concessions to Vladimir Putin.
Many believe that Russia would never have attacked Ukraine if Merkel had given the green light to Ukraine and Georgia’s membership applications at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008.
“I fully understood the desire of the Central and Eastern European countries to join NATO as soon as possible. However, with each enlargement, the alliance itself should have reconsidered how it would affect NATO’s security, stability and efficiency,” the former chancellor wrote in her memoirs. She stated that at that moment in the case of Ukraine, the fact that Russia had stationed its Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean peninsula, which would have led to “unforeseen consequences,” should have been taken into account. Merkel also emphasized that at that time only a minority of Ukrainians supported the application to join NATO. In her memoirs, the former chancellor emphasizes that the green light in principle for Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest summit meant for Putin a call to fight.
PUTIN? I KNEW, HE WAS NEVER A FRIEND OF EUROPE
I knew very well President Putin’s intentions. He always expressed them both publicly and in confidential conversations. I knew that we were not dealing with a friend of Europe. The question was only how to react. My answer was not to have any more relations with Putin, but rather to try to prevent the invasion of Ukraine through negotiations, sometimes with a lot of controversy, in which I never used word games. It worked for a while. With the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the situation changed radically.
The greatest joy of my life – the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Wall, German reunification and the unity of Europe – for Putin, on the other hand, are linked to the greatest misfortune of the 20th century, the end of the Soviet Union. Therefore, our views were diametrically opposed. Putin was trying to make Russia a great power again. But he could not do it on an economic level, through welfare for all. Instead he tried with the methods learned in the secret service, the KGB, through military force and Russian nationalism. So many of the hopes we had in 1990, that Russia would gradually take the path of democratization, have not been realized.
