Angela Merkel defends ties with Russia and blocking Ukraine from Nato
The former German chancellor, who quit politics three years ago, speaks to the BBC in a rare interview.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/48416264
Merkel's side of the story never made much sense to me.
Uncharitably you can say she didn't give a shit about Ukraine/anybody else and knowingly let Russia do as they like, so long as Germany got their gas deliveries.
It was particularly annoying how she'd dismiss the UK/Poland/others as being misguided or Russophobic when they warned about Russia. As if Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine in 2014 and used chemical weapons in the UK to assassinate someone.
Charitably you can say she was living in a fantasy land where she believed being nice to Russia, trying to integrate them into the west, and give them a platform would be an effective way to transform them into a progressive, democratic society. I can accept that in the 90s, but by the late 2000s it was clear that wasn't happening.
Neither of those are a good look.
For me it's hard to have a positive view of her. The more I learn about the past, the more my jaw drops at how fucking ignorant our leaders were. Russia has been at war since inception till today almost nonstop, with only a few years of non aggression. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia
A quick cherry picked list that should've been more than enough reason to NOT SEND BILLIONS OF EUROS TO RUSSIA!!!
1991 War in Georgia 1992 War in Transnistria (I didn't realize it's that old jesus...) 1994 The first Chechen war. 1999 Re-invasion of Chechnya. This one lasted until 2009, aka, started before and ended in the middle of Merkels career. Not counting the wars in cental Asia and the middle east as the west clearly doesn't give a shit.
There's a lot of shit that Russia did before the 2014 invasion. The fact that these people did and continue to defend their business with Russia is fucking repulsive.
Thank you for writing this. You help me focus my own thoughts about her. I've been angry at her for 10 years now - since her official reaction to the invasion of Ukraine.
It takes a lot of courage and self-reflection to admit errors from the past.
..and here we can see that these two are rare traits.
To be fair it could have worked if Bush jr hadn't been so stubborn
I've mentioned something similar in the Ukraine community discussions on Merkel, but if she knew that putin would invade and wanted to help Ukraine prepare, why was there no attempt to provide military (covert aid if needed)?
Her story never adds up, it's like she is grasping at straws to try and somehow explain away her support for russian genocidal imperialism.
Why can't she be honest and just openly say that she supports russian imperialism and believes it is right for russians to eliminate other nations. Schroder does it, with zero consequences.
She doesn't, not really. It's much simpler than that. The CDU are there to do the largest companies' bidding. In Germany, that is the vehicle and chemical industries. Both of them are extremely energy-intense. The cheaper the energy, the more profits. They instructed their government to secure that. Corporations give zero fucks about anything but profits. China could invade Russia for all they care, as long as they get cheap energy. It's a bit similar to many US people, who care about the price of a gallon of petrol over anything else, brown people be bombarded or not.
Normally, I would agree with you.
But Merkel is a little too explicit with openly parroting russian narratives "the west made him do it", almost to a tankie level.
I will note she never makes such statements about the role of russian society in enabling putin specifically and genocidal imperialism more broadly.
but if she knew that putin would invade and wanted to help Ukraine prepare, why was there no attempt to provide military (covert aid if needed)?
Have you ever wondered how the Ukrainian army went from getting caught with their pants down in 2014 to holding fast in 2022. Where all that... organisation suddenly came from. How a completely dysfunctional army could be brought into fighting shape in less than a generation. Why Ukrainians are outclassing Russia left and right in battlefield tactics and strategy.
I have no doubt that Ukraine would've been perfectly capable of developing all that stuff on its own, but in eight years? Sure, there's been pretty much constant engagement with the "people's republics" but that kind of thing doesn't make you a master of, say, manoeuvre warfare. It might pay off to have a look at whether or not there's any press coverage on Ukraine cooperating with other militaries in that time span. Just a hunch.
Not trying to defend Merkel here btw, why would I she's a CDU politician, I don't know if any of that has anything to do with her.
The improvement in the Ukrainian army was primarily driven by internal needs. One region was annexed and two others were invaded. At the beginning of the russian invasion, Ukraine only had around 5,000 battle ready troops (as per local media); of course there would be a change in military posture. Much of the early anti-air defense (S300 variants) were procured under Poroshenko who understand the risks of having russia as neighbour.
Military advice and training were primarily provided by US, UK, Canada, the Baltic nations and Poland. Where exactly did Germany play a role in military support? Can you be clear and specific.
I will highlight the reaction of the German government to the initial use of the Bayraktar drones at the LOC before full scale invasion:
Also don't forget that much of the performance of the Ukrainian army is also driven by motivation. Ukrainian soldiers are defending their country. Russian are fighting for loot and their Tsar.
Germany under Merkel did nothing from a military perspective and ignored and enabled every escalation by the russians. Show me how I am wrong.
