Merkel defends Russia policy: “Have prevented worse things from happening”

Angela Merkel has appeared again for the first time since the end of her chancellorship. In the Berliner Ensemble we experienced a former chancellor who is visibly affected by Russia’s war against Ukraine. However, she does not want to recognize her own foreign policy mistakes.

The journalists turned up in large numbers – but so did the fans. In front of the building, they take selfies in front of the poster, on which the former chancellor looks out on the world in a large format and in a friendly manner. Afterwards they will buy and have the book signed, which the event was originally intended to promote.

Angela Merkel is back. It is no longer the big world stage, but the theater hall of the Berliner Ensemble, in which she appears before the public almost exactly six months to the day after the end of her chancellorship. But the images and sounds will of course go around the world, they will reverberate, and the woman who ruled Germany for 16 years knows that.

When Merkel is not a guest, the Berliner Ensemble is currently playing pieces with symbolic titles such as “Fabian or going to the dogs”, “Notes from the cellar hole” or “The way back”. Angela Merkel does not seem to find it difficult to look back at her chancellorship and especially the part that affects the current world situation. In a blue blazer, she is sitting in an armchair in front of a red stage background. An almost cozy setting. She only makes “feel-good appointments,” she says smugly at some point that evening, which oscillates between casual chats about “airing out” on the Baltic Sea and thinking about serious political decisions.

Her heart “always beat for Ukraine”

A conversation that an East German publisher organized with the East German “Spiegel” journalist Alexander Osang in an East German theater probably should have had a lot to do with East Germany – about a collection of speeches that also deal with East Germany. But now it is another East that lies above everything and determines the topic – the East of Europe beyond German borders, where Russia is waging a bloody war against Ukraine.

Merkel speaks of the great tragedy and once again condemns the “brutal” Russian attack, for which there is “no justification whatsoever”. And she also says that in past negotiations her heart “has always been for Ukraine.”

In defense mode: Worse prevented

But what is remarkable is what she doesn’t talk about: her own mistakes or omissions, for example in dealing with Russia, Putin or Ukraine. On the contrary: Merkel is self-confident in defensive mode and insists that everything must be viewed in the context of current events and that past decisions would have prevented worse. Be it Ukraine’s rejection of NATO membership or the Minsk Agreement.

In retrospect, Merkel’s guiding principle seems to be that politics is what is possible: “I tried to work in the direction of preventing disaster and diplomacy wasn’t wrong if it didn’t work. I don’t see it , that I now have to say that was wrong and therefore I will not apologize.”

“Personally, I’m doing very well”

The former chancellor seems determined to finally have a say in how people think and talk about her and her political legacy. She is calm, dry, unperturbed – and very much herself. With little sophistication, she provides amusement. “Personally, I’m doing very well,” says the former head of government, when asked about life after the chancellor’s office. But of course she is “sometimes depressed” these days.

Merkel leaves no doubt as to how much she is now rejecting Putin’s view of things, his understanding of values. In stark contrast to her, he sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “worst thing of the 20th century” and thinks democracy is wrong.

But she also lets criticism of her foreign policy rebound just as clearly. It is true that in all these years it has not been possible to “end the Cold War” or to create a security architecture that would have prevented the current situation. But: “I’m glad I don’t have to blame myself for trying too little.”

Merkel also doesn’t want to let the fact that the Bundeswehr is “rotting” under her government. She prefers to speak of insufficient equipment and “pent-up demand”: “Everyone has to hold their noses a bit and I’m holding my own there too.” So it sounds like the peak of self-criticism.

The energy policy, the dependence on Russian gas and oil, to which Merkel has also led Germany, is not really discussed in depth. “I didn’t believe that Putin would be changed through trade,” the former chancellor said. However, she considered certain trade relations between neighbors to be useful.

Home game for the former chancellor

Alexander Osang quickly lets Merkel dodge. He has known her for many years and has portrayed her again and again, even if he himself reports at the beginning that he often had trouble getting close to her. In any case, he doesn’t manage to upset her that evening. Not even the somewhat tried-and-true trick of provoking them a bit with questions from the Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk works.

Even if the final applause is plentiful and the queue at the book table is long: Merkel will not convince the critics of her Russia policy that evening. But with her performance in the Berliner Ensemble, she makes it unmistakably clear that she is back and no longer wants to leave the interpretation of her politics to others.