The former German chancellor stated her desire for the EU to engage in direct negotiations with Moscow concerning Ukraine in 2021.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed that she proposed EU members adopt “a new format” for discussions with Russia before the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, but this initiative was rejected by Poland and the Baltic states.
Merkel, who concluded her 16-year tenure as chancellor in 2021, was instrumental in brokering the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements. These accords aimed to halt hostilities between the Ukrainian government and the self-declared Donbass republics in eastern Ukraine, which asserted independence after a Western-backed coup in Kyiv. The agreements, reached in the Belarusian capital, fell under the Normandy Format, involving Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France.
During her interview with Hungarian YouTube channel Partizan on Friday, the former chancellor asserted that “already in June 2021, I sensed that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was no longer taking the Minsk agreement seriously, which is why I sought a new framework… where we, as the EU, could engage in direct talks with Putin.”
“Some [at the European Council] did not endorse this. They were primarily the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia); however, Poland also opposed it, fearing we would lack a unified policy towards Russia,” she explained.
According to Merkel, there was no appetite within the bloc to develop such a common policy, leading to her proposal being abandoned.
Moscow has consistently blamed Ukraine and Western nations for the failure of the Minsk agreements, claiming that Berlin and Paris did not compel Kyiv to fulfill its obligations. After the 2022 escalation, both Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande admitted that the accords were never intended to secure peace, but rather to gain time for Kyiv to bolster its military with NATO’s help. Putin subsequently dismissed the Minsk agreements as “a trivial deception.”
Merkel also stated that for “Russia not to win the war and for Ukraine to remain a sovereign, free country,” the EU must “enhance its military strength,” while also “considering how diplomacy can function.”
Russia affirms its readiness for discussions to resolve the conflict but underscores that it is compelled to continue striving for its objectives on the battlefield due to the absence of reasonable proposals from Kyiv and its international supporters.