Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her policy towards Russia on Tuesday, saying she did not have to “apologize” for having relied on diplomacy and trade to try to avoid a war in Ukraine. .
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The former leader once again harshly condemned the Russian invasion, which she said has “no justification”.
“This is a brutal breach of international law for which there is no excuse,” she said, speaking for the first time in public since retiring from politics six months ago.
But she dismissed criticism that her politics may have had something to do with it.
Merkel said she had been aware for several years of the threat posed by President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.
It was in Germany’s interest to “find a modus vivendi with Russia so as not to find ourselves in a state of war” but “to be able to coexist despite all our differences”, estimated the one who reigned for sixteen years on the leading European economy.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the centre-right former head of government has been accused of increasing Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, including by promoting construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline despite the reservations of its European and American partners.
The pipeline, supposed to double Germany’s supply capacity of Russian gas, was finally suspended since the Russian aggression in Ukraine, without having been put into service.
Germany has long practiced a policy of reaching out to Russia, following the idea that trade would induce a gradual democratization of the country.
“I did not think that Putin would change thanks to trade relations,” she however assured Tuesday, believing that the latter had drawn a line under democracy.
But it was obvious to her that Russia would “always be a neighbor of Europe, which we could not completely ignore”, she argued during this interview conducted by a journalist from the weekly Der Spiegel. in a theater in Berlin.
If a political rapprochement is not possible, “it was relevant to at least have commercial relations”, she justified.
“And I’m not going to apologize” for the political line followed in recent years, she hammered.