Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Poland and the Baltic states bear responsibility for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Her comments were made in a recent interview with Hungarian media outlet Partizan.
Merkel, who led Germany from 2005 to 2021, argued that a breakdown in diplomacy between the EU and Moscow helped create the conditions for war.
Highlights
- Angela Merkel blamed Poland and the Baltic states for opposing talks with Putin, contributing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Merkel said her 2021 proposal for direct talks with Putin failed, and Putin’s aggression began after she left office.
- The Minsk Agreements brought calm from 2015 to 2021, helping Ukraine strengthen before Russia violated them.
- Merkel defended energy ties with Russia, but critics say Germany’s gas dependence funded Moscow’s military actions.
Angela Merkel said Poland and the Baltic states helped set the stage for the Russia-Ukraine war
Image credits: Stefan Sauer/Getty Images
She claimed that Poland and the Baltic states–Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—opposed closer talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which she believes might have prevented the invasion.
According to Merkel, the refusal by those countries to back new negotiations over the Minsk Agreements led to rising tensions with Moscow.
“These were primarily the Baltic states, but Poland was also against it,” she said.
She added that they were afraid that “we wouldn’t have a common policy towards Russia.”
Merkel said her proposal to restart direct talks with Putin in 2021 “didn't come to fruition,” and that once she left office, “Putin’s aggression began.”
Image credits: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
The Minsk I and II agreements were signed in 2014 and 2015, respectively, after Russian-backed separatists seized parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The deals, involving Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), aimed to bring about a ceasefire.
Merkel said the agreements brought “about calm” between 2015 and 2021, giving Ukraine time to “gather strength” and “become a different country.”
However, fighting never fully stopped, and by 2021, Russia was no longer following the terms closely.
Merkel’s comments come as Russia intensifies its aerial bombardments on Ukrainian cities.
On Sunday, officials said more than 50 ballistic missiles and 500 drones struck nine regions across Ukraine. In the western city of Lviv, four people, including a teenager, were killed in the largest attack there since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Estonia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Margus Tsahkna, attributed Russia’s war against Ukraine to Moscow.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine is driven by one thing and one thing only: its refusal to accept the Soviet Union’s collapse and its unrelenting imperialist ambitions,” he said on X.
‘They don’t understand that by doing business with Putin, they provoked a war!’ a Polish member of the European Parliament said
Image credits: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
“Angela Merkel proved with her thoughtless interview that she is one of the German politicians who have caused the greatest harm to Europe over the past century,” former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, according to EurAsia Daily.
Polish Member of the European Parliament, Waldemar Buda, said,“If Merkel declares that she wants to negotiate with Putin again, it will probably end with the division of Ukraine! They don’t understand that by doing business with Putin, they provoked a war!”
Merkel spent 16 years as Germany’s leader and was seen as one of the few Western politicians who could speak directly to Putin. She grew up in East Germany and speaks fluent Russian.
Over her time in office, she dealt with Putin through repeated crises: the 2008 war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in 2020.
Despite these confrontations, Merkel continued to pursue dialogue and economic ties with Moscow.
She strongly backed gas pipeline projects such as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, which linked Russia directly to Germany.
By the time she left office, about 40% of Germany’s natural gas came from Russia, making Germany reliant on Russia for energy.
Merkel defended these energy deals as necessary for German industry and as a way to keep relations with Moscow stable.
Her critics in the EU and NATO, such as Polish politician Radoslaw Fogiel, argued that German gas payments filled Russia’s “war chest.”
Image credits: Guido Bergmann/Getty Images
Critics in her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party have also admitted that Germany’s dependence on Russian gas was a mistake.
Former German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen had also warned after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 that Germany needed to reduce energy imports from Russia.
Merkel’s approach to Ukraine also shaped Europe’s current situation. At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, she opposed granting Ukraine and Georgia a clear path to NATO membership.
She defended this stance during a BBC interview in 2022. “That wasn’t the Ukraine we know today. The country was not stable, it was riddled with corruption,” she said.
Merkel is a vocal critic of Ukraine joining NATO
Later, in a 2024 interview, also with the BBC, Merkel doubled down on her belief that if Ukraine had started joining NATO, war with Russia would have come even earlier.
“We would have seen military conflict even earlier,” she said. “It was completely clear to me that President Putin would not have stood idly by and watched Ukraine join NATO.
“And back then, Ukraine as a country would certainly not have been as prepared as it was in February 2022,” she added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called this a “miscalculation” that emboldened Russia.