Were Poland and the Baltic States at least partly to blame for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022? According to some angry headlines, Angela Merkel appeared to make that explosive accusation in a recent interview with the Hungarian newspaper Partizan.
Speaking of her efforts to negotiate with Putin in the summer of 2021, Merkel recalled that she and Emmanuel Macron had pushed for “a new format… where we would speak directly with Putin as the European Union”. But that initiative was scuppered by the opposition of “primarily the Baltic States and Poland was also against it”. Rather than speak to the Kremlin with a united voice, it was left to individual EU leaders to try to talk a belligerent Putin back from the brink of war. And that, Merkel seems to imply, betrayed a fatal European disunity that encouraged the Russian leader to invade.
Merkel’s critics have been quick to point out that if there is blame to be handed out, she herself bears much of the responsibility. In 2008 Merkel took a strong stand against extending Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine. Despite Putin’s invasion of Georgia later that year and his annexation of Crimea in 2014, Merkel remained a supporter of both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that linked Germany and the rest of Europe to cheap Gazprom gas – and helped fill the Kremlin’s war chest. Instead of threatening retaliation or sanctions against Russia for its aggressions, Merkel instead backed conciliation and peacemaking processes such as the Minsk Accords. She also opposed arming Ukraine, preferring to believe that Putin could be persuaded to back down.
As Merkel herself said in her controversial interview, “we won’t be able to clarify today what would have happened” if, for instance, Europe had spoken with a single voice in the months before Putin’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine. But in the big picture history has proven that the Baltic States, with their shrill warnings of coming Russian aggression, were right and Merkel was wrong.
Merkel, like her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, believed that integrating Russia’s economy with Europe’s through energy sales would dissuade the Kremlin from making war. In the event, she was mistaken. Putin cared more about neutralising Ukraine as a strategic threat than he cared about the terrible cost to his country’s economy. Merkel believed that Putin was a rational, good-faith negotiator who was genuinely concerned by the fate of the Russian-speaking population of Donbas. In reality, it was Putin’s proxies who covertly provoked the 2014 Donbas rebellion in the first place. And far from being a rational actor, Putin was prey to eccentric world-historical theories about his own messianic role as Russia’s saviour. He also lived in a closed bubble of bad information that led him to believe that the Russian speakers of Ukraine were waiting to be liberated, and that the Kyiv government would be easily toppled.
Why does all this ancient history remain so controversial today? Because the basic fault lines in the West’s position before the war remain, and they are playing a key role in the endgame of the Ukraine war. During the build-up to Putin’s invasion, the Biden White House was cautious about supplying Ukraine with offensive weapons for fear of provoking an escalation.
Now, the Trump administration has washed its hands of funding Ukraine’s war effort and has handed the problem to Europe to sort out. But Europe remains as disunited as it was before the war. Friedrich Merz, Merkel’s successor, has not joined a “coalition of the willing” led by Macron and Sir Keir Starmer that proposes a European peacekeeping force on the ground. The Baltics remain as resolutely Russophobia as ever, but Poland’s new president Karol Nawrocki has spoken against Ukraine joining the EU and Nato and scrapped benefits for Ukrainian refugees. Hungary and Slovakia oppose EU military aid to Kyiv and continue to import Russian oil and gas. The newly-elected parliament of the Czech Republic is dominated by a Ukraine-sceptic party.
Historians will doubtless debate for years whether Europe provoked Putin’s aggression or, conversely, did too little to deter and prevent it. But one thing is clear after three and a half years of war, and that is that Europe still has no united position on how to face down Putin, and it’s Ukraine that is paying the price.
Were Poland and the Baltic States at least partly to blame for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022? According to some angry headlines, Angela Merkel appeared to make that explosive accusation in a recent interview with the Hungarian newspaper Partizan.
Speaking of her efforts to negotiate with Putin in the summer of 2021, Merkel recalled that she and Emmanuel Macron had pushed for “a new format… where we would speak directly with Putin as the European Union”. But that initiative was scuppered by the opposition of “primarily the Baltic States and Poland was also against it”. Rather than speak to the Kremlin with a united voice, it was left to individual EU leaders to try to talk a belligerent Putin back from the brink of war. And that, Merkel seems to imply, betrayed a fatal European disunity that encouraged the Russian leader to invade.
Merkel’s critics have been quick to point out that if there is blame to be handed out, she herself bears much of the responsibility. In 2008 Merkel took a strong stand against extending Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine. Despite Putin’s invasion of Georgia later that year and his annexation of Crimea in 2014, Merkel remained a supporter of both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that linked Germany and the rest of Europe to cheap Gazprom gas – and helped fill the Kremlin’s war chest. Instead of threatening retaliation or sanctions against Russia for its aggressions, Merkel instead backed conciliation and peacemaking processes such as the Minsk Accords. She also opposed arming Ukraine, preferring to believe that Putin could be persuaded to back down.
As Merkel herself said in her controversial interview, “we won’t be able to clarify today what would have happened” if, for instance, Europe had spoken with a single voice in the months before Putin’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine. But in the big picture history has proven that the Baltic States, with their shrill warnings of coming Russian aggression, were right and Merkel was wrong.
Merkel, like her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, believed that integrating Russia’s economy with Europe’s through energy sales would dissuade the Kremlin from making war. In the event, she was mistaken. Putin cared more about neutralising Ukraine as a strategic threat than he cared about the terrible cost to his country’s economy. Merkel believed that Putin was a rational, good-faith negotiator who was genuinely concerned by the fate of the Russian-speaking population of Donbas. In reality, it was Putin’s proxies who covertly provoked the 2014 Donbas rebellion in the first place. And far from being a rational actor, Putin was prey to eccentric world-historical theories about his own messianic role as Russia’s saviour. He also lived in a closed bubble of bad information that led him to believe that the Russian speakers of Ukraine were waiting to be liberated, and that the Kyiv government would be easily toppled.
Why does all this ancient history remain so controversial today? Because the basic fault lines in the West’s position before the war remain, and they are playing a key role in the endgame of the Ukraine war. During the build-up to Putin’s invasion, the Biden White House was cautious about supplying Ukraine with offensive weapons for fear of provoking an escalation.
Now, the Trump administration has washed its hands of funding Ukraine’s war effort and has handed the problem to Europe to sort out. But Europe remains as disunited as it was before the war. Friedrich Merz, Merkel’s successor, has not joined a “coalition of the willing” led by Macron and Sir Keir Starmer that proposes a European peacekeeping force on the ground. The Baltics remain as resolutely Russophobia as ever, but Poland’s new president Karol Nawrocki has spoken against Ukraine joining the EU and Nato and scrapped benefits for Ukrainian refugees. Hungary and Slovakia oppose EU military aid to Kyiv and continue to import Russian oil and gas. The newly-elected parliament of the Czech Republic is dominated by a Ukraine-sceptic party.
Historians will doubtless debate for years whether Europe provoked Putin’s aggression or, conversely, did too little to deter and prevent it. But one thing is clear after three and a half years of war, and that is that Europe still has no united position on how to face down Putin, and it’s Ukraine that is paying the price.