Merkel says she did not blame the Baltic states and Poland for the failure of talks with Putin

Former сhancellor of Germany Angela Merkel has denied accusations that she had previously partially blamed Poland and the Baltic states for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The former politician said this in an interview with the German TV channel Phoenix, reports Politico.

"You have to call it fake news, meaning that it wasn’t said at all," Merkel said, adding that her comments were misinterpreted.

In early October, the ex-politician got into a scandal. She said that in 2021, due to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, it was allegedly impossible to start a new format of negotiations with Russia, after which Moscow launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Merkel explained that she and French President Emmanuel Macron should have negotiated with the dictator of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on behalf of the European Union.

In response, her criticized a number of representatives of the Baltic States and Poland.

"It was simply a discussion about chronological developments, as they already appear in my book "Freiheit"[Freedom]. For a whole year, no one had an issue with it... And then a big uproar arose because hardly anyone reads the original anymore," Merkel said in a new interview.

When asked whether she wanted to blame Poland or the Baltic states for the new invasion, the former chancellor replied: "No. We all failed – me, everyone else – we all failed to prevent this war, including in our talks with the Americans."

The former politician also stated that in 2021, a few days before she proposed a new format for negotiations with Russia during the European Council, the then US President Joe Biden met with the Russian dictator: "And I simply didn’t think it was good that we Europeans were not also seeking a conversation with Putin and were leaving that entirely to the American administration."

"That’s why I advocated for this new proposal, and there was opposition," Merkel added, emphasizing that her statement did not include "attribution of blame" for responsibility for a full-scale war.

• This is not the first scandalous statement Merkel has made since leaving the chancellorship. For example, in her memoirs, the politician stated that she tried to block Ukraine's accession to NATO because even then feared a possible military response from Moscow.