Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told the BBC the gas deals she made with Russia were intended to help German firms and kept the peace with Moscow.
She also insisted the war with Ukraine would have started earlier if she hadn’t blocked Kyiv’s entry into Nato in 2008.
Angela Merkel led Germany for 16 years. She was in office during the financial crisis, the 2015 migrant crisis and, significantly, Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
Was she too soft on Moscow? Too slow to help Kyiv? If she hadn’t blocked Ukraine’s Nato membership in 2008, would there be a war there now?
Speaking to the BBC in Berlin, Mrs Merkel is robust in her defence of her time in office.
She says she believes the war in Ukraine would have started sooner and would likely have been worse, if Kyiv had begun the path to Nato membership in 2008.
“We would have seen military conflict even earlier. It was completely clear to me that President Putin would not have stood idly by and watched Ukraine join Nato.
“And back then, Ukraine as a country would certainly not have been as prepared as it was in February 2022.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky disagrees.
He describes Mrs Merkel’s Nato decision, backed by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as a clear “miscalculation” that emboldened Russia.
In a rare interview since she stepped down from politics three years ago, Mrs Merkel expresses concern about Vladimir Putin’s renewed threats of using nuclear weapons.
The two leaders got to know each other well over the course of two decades.
Credit: bbc.com
