Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has accused Poland and the Baltic states of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Merkel, who led the country between 2005 and 2021, made this controversial statement in an interview with the Hungarian publication Partizan, cited by Daily Mail.
She accused Poland and the Baltic states of breaking diplomatic ties between Russia and the EU, which she said led to the invasion of Ukraine just a few months later.
According to Merkel, Poland's refusal to support the Minsk Agreements, key international agreements between Russia and the EU, encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022.
The agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015 by representatives of Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), aimed to establish a ceasefire between the two countries and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics.
Merkel, contradicted by reality
Merkel claimed that the first Minsk agreement "brought calm" between 2015 and 2021 and gave Ukraine, which had been defeated by Russia during a counteroffensive aimed at reclaiming its territory, time to "gather strength" and "become a different country."
However, in reality, the fighting continued, and the ceasefire agreement was violated.
By January 2015, just four months after the signing of the first Minsk agreement, Russia and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) engaged in fierce fighting with Ukrainian forces, despite Kremlin's interests being satisfied.
The second agreement was signed the following month, which did not prevent further fighting. Between 2015 and 2021, Russian forces killed or injured over 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers, defying the ceasefire agreement.
But Merkel said that only in 2021 "she felt that Putin was no longer taking the Minsk Agreement seriously."
"That's why I wanted a new format in which we could speak directly with Putin, as the European Union. Some did not support this. Mainly the Baltic states, but Poland was also against it," Merkel said.
She added that these four nations were "afraid" that "we would not have a common policy towards Russia."
"In any case, the new format did not materialize. Then I left office, and then Putin's aggression began," Merkel concluded.
Her statements come after at least five civilians died as Russia launched drones, missiles, and guided aerial bombs on Ukraine on Saturday night into Sunday, in a major attack that officials there said targeted civilian infrastructure.
Four people, including a 15-year-old, died in an attack on the city of Lviv, according to regional officials and Ukraine's emergency service.
It was the largest aerial attack on the historic city in western Ukraine and the surrounding region since Russia's large-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, according to Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the local military administration.