In a controversial interview with the Hungarian media outlet Partizan, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel identified Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as the main factors behind Russia’s severing of diplomatic relations with the European Union, citing this move as a reason for Moscow’s military invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Merkel, who led Germany from 2005 to 2021, referred in the interview published on Friday to the Minsk agreements (2014) and (2015), which were signed with the mediation of Germany and France to establish a ceasefire in the Donbas region.
He claimed that these agreements created a temporary lull from 2015 to 2021, giving Ukraine time to rebuild its power and become a different country.
According to Merkel, in June 2021, she felt that Vladimir Putin was no longer taking the Minsk agreement seriously and proposed creating a new format for direct EU dialogue with Putin, but it was mainly opposed by the Baltic countries and Poland
