BERLIN — Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel hit out at the EU on Monday for not using its diplomatic clout to help end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“I think the military support we’ve provided so far is absolutely the right thing to do. I also think it’s right that we do much more to create a deterrent effect beyond our support for Ukraine. What I regret is that, in my view, Europe is not making sufficient use of its diplomatic potential,” Merkel said during an interview with public broadcaster WDR.
“It’s not enough for [U.S. President Donald] Trump to maintain contact with Russia,” she added.
Pressure is building on Europe to appoint a special envoy for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Both Moscow and Kyiv have signaled openness to such a mediator at a time when Trump’s negotiating team is squarely focused on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Merkel, who served as Germany’s chancellor from 2005 to 2021, said she had proposed establishing a diplomatic format between the EU and Russia during her last European Council meeting in October 2021 at the end of her tenure — four months before Russia’s all-out war began. But she added that it had failed due to differing opinions within the bloc on how best to deal with Moscow.
“You have to keep working on it until you reach a common position,” she said about differences within the bloc. “Diplomacy has always been the other side of the coin, also during the Cold War.”
Merkel’s legacy has come under scrutiny in recent years over Germany’s increased dependence on Russian gas during her tenure, with criticism mounting since the start of Moscow’s full-scale attack on Ukraine four years ago.
But her past negotiating experience with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also led to Merkel’s name being floated as one of the possible candidates for becoming the EU’s peace envoy to help resolve the conflict.
Merkel, however, said her office had not received any official request to that end. The center-right politician also stressed she believed that only those who hold power are credible negotiators, noting her experiences with Putin after his illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“We were only able to hold those [negotiations] with President Putin because we had political power, because we were heads of government,” Merkel said. “You need that power. And I, personally, would never have thought of asking a mediator to go to Minsk for me and talk to Putin … You have to take that into your own hands.”
The Minsk agreements — brokered by Merkel and her French counterpart in 2014 and 2015 to halt the fighting in eastern Ukraine — failed to secure a lasting ceasefire. Violations continued for years before Russia’s total war kicked off in 2022.
