Angela Merkel returns to defend her policy towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia before the invasion of Ukraine. And now you, in an interview with Der Spiegel, reveal that you tried in the summer of 2021 to start talks in a European format, which should also have involved Emmanuel Macron, to try to defuse the tensions that were already building up in Ukraine. “But I no longer had the authority to lobby: because everyone knew I was leaving in the autumn,” said the former German chancellor, who finally handed over to the new chancellor Olaf Scholz in early December. And just over two months later, Russia invaded the Ukraine.
Merkel had been the main force of the so-called Normandy Format, created in 2014 by Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the conflict in Donbass, which reached the Minsk agreements in early 2015 never fully applied. Also in the summer of 2021, Merkel made her last official visit to Moscow, but even on that occasion she felt she no longer had the power and influence to put pressure on Putin: “her attitude was clear ‘as regards political power, you’re finished’, for Putin only power counts».
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