Angela Merkel’s Recent Interview with Der Spiegel
Wikimedia commonsThe interview is behind a paywall and I’ve not been able to access it to read directly. I’ve read a few articles in English speaking media summarizing a few points from it. Below is Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett’s summary of Alexander Mercouris’ commentary on the interview as it relates to Russia, the Minsk Agreements and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Angela Merkel, former German chancellor, has given an interview with Die Spiegel in which she indicates that had she been in control the crisis would not have taken place. She mentioned her initiative with Macron to get a conversation going between Russia and the EU in 2021. She discovered that the Russians by that time were skeptical and doubtful whether she would be able to deliver on her promises, given that she would not be chancellor for much longer. She was regretful that she ran into opposition from the Baltic States, from Poland, from the Netherlands which made dialog with the Russians impossible. She also talked about the Minsk agreements, which she largely authored, about how by 2021 the Minsk agreement had been hollowed out (Ukraine’s Poroshenko has openly admitted he never intended to honor it anyway) and she indicates she was looking for some form of Minsk III.
Mercouris considers that Merkel lacks understanding of how Russia thinks about these things. He recalls how Macron offended the Russians intensely by telling Putin to forget about Minsk II, to hand the Donbass back to Ukraine, and talk with Zelenskiy. Neither Merkel nor Macron ever understood how giving up on Minsk and letting Zelenkiy off the hook for Ukraine’s egregious failure to implement the peace agreement, poisoned relations with Russia. They seem to have thought that, provided the price was right, Russia could be persuaded to give up the Donbass, despite the clarity with which Russia had told Europe otherwise – reminiscent of the US attitude to the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 when the Americans thought they could get Russia to agree to abandon its support for Assad. Russia insisted that the joint interest was fighting the jihadists.
Merkel’s inability to understand Russia, to take its positions seriously, is critically revealing of Europe’s fateful disdain for its opponent. The West badly underestimates Russian persistence, and maintains wholly flawed misconceptions of the true nature of Russia and Russian institutions.
Link to Mercouris video here. Begins around 49 minute, 50 second mark.
