For the first time since her farewell in the fall, former Chancellor Merkel spoke publicly again on Tuesday evening. She spoke with a reporter about her life in the busy Berlin band.

She thought critically of herself and the rest of the (former) government leaders who negotiated with Moscow: “We failed to build a security structure that would prevent this,” Merkel said of the recent invasion of Ukraine.

According to the former adviser, “In 2008, Ukraine was an oligarchic and deeply divided country. However, now President Zelensky is fighting with incredible courage against corruption. That the former advisor with appease (The politics of reconciliation) would have opened the door for Putin to foment war, Merkel doesn’t think. She said the Minsk agreement she negotiated with Putin, when thousands were killed in Ukraine in clashes with pro-Russian separatists, was not ideal, “but it did bring peace to Ukraine. Without Minsk, there was massive damage to Ukraine.”

Merkel says Putin should not allow Ukraine to be as Western as the GDR. I compared the situation of Kyiv to 1956 and 1968, when the Soviet Union forcibly invaded Budapest and Prague.

“National Portal”

Finally, Merkel ruled that Putin “wants to destroy the European Union because he sees it as a gateway to NATO.”

The former chancellor strongly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Merkel said there were no excuses for this “brutal violation of international law”. She believes that countries cannot look back centuries in time to determine which territory they belong to. “Then we will only have a war.”