KYIV — Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel needs to stop trying to justify her decisions in office which emboldened Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin and led to disastrous consequences for Ukraine, a top lawmaker in Kyiv told POLITICO.
“If Ukraine had been given a NATO accession action plan (MAP) during the Bucharest summit (in 2008), this could have prevented further Russian aggression against Ukraine,” Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the foreign relations committee in the Ukrainian parliament, said Friday.
Merezhko was reacting to Merkel’s public appearances during the promotion of her new book, “Freedom,” in which she justified the decision to stop Ukraine’s accession to NATO in 2008, the Minsk agreements that led to freezing Moscow’s war in Ukraine for eight years and the controversial Russia-to-Europe Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Merkel has also called to explore a diplomatic solution to the war at some point, though the leadership in Ukraine says that Moscow cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.
“It is not only in the interest of Ukraine, but also in our interest that Putin does not win this war,” Merkel told German public broadcaster ZDF on Thursday, but “diplomatic solutions must always be considered in parallel.”
That caused jaws to drop in Ukraine.
“What kind of ‘return to diplomacy’ can we even talk about, when such ‘diplomacy’ under Merkel’s auspices in the form of the ‘Minsk Process’ has already occurred and led to full-scale aggression?” Merezhko said.
According to the lawmaker, Merkel can’t admit that she paid more attention to German economic interests than common European security.
“Merkel took into account the interests and demands of her economic partner Russia more than the interests of Ukraine. Her policy towards Russia can be called a policy of appeasement,” Merezhko said.
Merkel has stated that if not for her decisions, Putin would have invaded Ukraine much earlier.
But Merezhko said that Putin launched his full-scale invasion in 2022 because he was sure he would not meet any sharp reaction from politicians, like Merkel in 2014.
“Unfortunately, Merkel has not learned from her mistakes,” he added.
The post Top Ukrainian MP to Merkel: Enough already appeared first on Politico.
