Does the Mask Still Fit? Merkel’s Legacy-Protective Reframing of the Russo-Ukrainian War

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), current German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated the following: “Europe is more tested now than perhaps at any time in our lifetimes. Germany must – and will – assume a particular share of responsibility.” Just a few short weeks later, in a long-form interview posted on YouTube with Hungary’s Partizán news outlet, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke about her experience in June 2021 when she and French President Emmanuel Macron had floated the idea of the EU holding direct talks with Vladimir Putin in an effort to calm re-ignited tensions with Ukraine. However, at that time, COVID-19 was given as the reason for preventing more frequent dialogue with Russia, which Merkel felt was crucial to ensuring that the Minsk Agreement be upheld.

In this new interview, Merkel revealed that it was in fact the Baltic states and Poland who were against such initiatives, and then claimed that “in any case, it didn’t happen. Then I left office, and then Putin’s aggression began.” Clearly, such a statement aims to manipulate memory for strategic purposes by placing significant blame on the Baltic states and Poland in the lead-up to the war, while also suggesting that Merkel herself had been serving as a peace-making actor, playing no role in empowering Russia to take such aggressive actions.

The reaction to Merkel’s comments was near instant. For example, Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna responded that Merkel was “simply wrong” and that instead of strongly responding to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, or its war in Georgia, the West has instead continuously ignored reality and sought to normalize relations with Russia. Another example of the outrage initiated by Merkel’s comments was captured by Poland’s Minister for Regional Policy, Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz (former Polish Ambassador to Russia), who stated that being blamed for starting a war because they “didn’t bow deeply enough before Moscow is absurd.”

Why say it, and why say it there?

In short, Merkel argues about process in order to justify and defend her legacy and relations with Russia during her time as Chancellor, which focused on fostering “change through trade” – including sanctions, Minsk diplomacy, and energy interdependence as a ‘bridge’ with strategic intentions. This political approach is now criticized because of the events that have followed since 2022. Merkel’s casting of 2021 as a sort of missed off-ramp shifts focus from Berlin’s (and Merkel’s) long-term bet on engagement with Russia to an Eastern European veto that indirectly led to the war in Ukraine in the first place. Similarly, this mimics the theme that ‘if I were still in office, the war would never have happened in the first place,’ which politicians such as US President Donald Trump tend to employ as a discursive strategy. Legally and morally, the aggressor is Russia. What Merkel’s storytelling does is recast the focus on the intra-EU process of who blocked talks, rather than on the actor who chose invasion over dialogue. This narrative also directly undermines EU unity against Russia’s aggression, which is already seen as a sensitive and fragile issue.

The venue of this interview further amplifies the political impact on EU unity. The Partizán is an independent, opposition leaning (left-wing) YouTube channel from Hungary that operates within a highly polarized media ecosystem, which placed 68th in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index. Additionally, alongside being the second lowest among EU member states in this index, recent reports indicate that Prime Minister Victor Orbán and his allies have consolidated control over around 80% of the press media in Hungary.The Partizán is hardly a mouthpiece for Budapest, but it is undoubtedly interesting that such an interview would come from the EU member state most often associated with strategic ambiguity in its relations with Moscow. It is worth noting, however, that during the same interview, when asked whether Orbán was a Trojan horse for Putin into the EU, Merkel simply stated that this propagated idea was “nonsense.” As placed in Hungary’s polarized media space, the Merkel clip conveys intra-EU blame, further testing cohesion by muddying the EU’s message to Moscow.

For the Baltics and Poland, the issue in 2021 was both a threat and signal test. As the Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda warned, engaging in dialogue with Putin without tangible changes in Russian behaviour would send “uncertain and very bad signals” that the EU was placating Russia’s actions. Hosting summits without leverage and making agreements without cost or constraints creates an opportunity for Russia to further normalize coercion and potentially foster coalition-splitting rather than deterring it. Viewed in this light, the disapproval in 2021 from Poland and the Baltics was not obstructionism but rather a security inference informed by Russian actions and a fear for potentially being the next target of Russia’s aggression.

An inconvenient backdrop

There is a reason Eastern Europe balks at Merkel’s ‘if only we had talked more’ sentiments. For three decades, Germany’s policy towards Russia combined binding and deterrence through sanctions and Minsk diplomacy, alongside a dense web of commercial, energy, and even security-based ties. The Rheinmetall field simulator project, or the Mulino case, where a German prime military contractor supplying high-end training systems to a Russian arms centre was entirely conceivable before 2014. Only after the annexation of Crimea did Berlin entirely revoke the license. The cancellation showed that routine cooperation between Germany and Russia had been institutionalized even after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008.

The EU’s own briefings on Nord Stream 2 noted that it did not diversify the European energy supply enough, which led to debates and arguments from Poland, for example, which worried that Moscow could have weaponized energy interdependence as a means of blackmail, as well as broader concerns that Russia was using such initiatives to circumvent sanctions. Angela Merkel had reiterated to partners, and more specifically to Kyiv, that gas must not be used as a weaponized geopolitical tool, despite being seemingly immune to the suggestion that Russia would, in fact, use energy as a tool to achieve its political interests in Europe.

Schröder, the useful contrast

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Merkel’s predecessor, moved straight into Russian energy after his time leading Germany, first chairing Nord Stream AG (the European-Russian pipeline company), then later joining the board of Rosneft (a state-owned Russian oil company), from which he resigned in 2022 under mounting political pressure. Additionally, Schröder had flirted with a supervisory board seat at the Russian energy giant Gazprom; however, he did not assume the position, which was later stripped of a taxpayer-funded office by the Bundestag, prompting him to navigate the German court system to regain his office. However, the courts upheld his loss of privileges.

Merkel, by contrast, has not taken any corporate posts from Russian-based firms. However, her entanglement with Moscow is apparent through her narrative in the interview which re-allocates the burden of the war within the EU. This reframing serves two distinct purposes: The first is directly shifting any accountability for the complex situation Europe currently finds itself in with Russia, and the second, more indirectly, serves Russian hybrid tactics that seek to portray the EU as disunified and as the antagonist in the Russia-Ukraine war.

What now?

Merkel’s interview works less as revisionism and more as a redistribution of memory, agency, and what she believes that EU unity should have resulted in during that time. It invites a tempting but counterfactual narrative that is ultimately counterproductive: that one more conversation might have ‘saved the day’ if only the Easterners had not blocked it. The empirical record – from Mulino to Nord Stream – suggests the opposite. That being said, diplomacy only works when backed by credible costs; absent that, it enables coercion. The lesson Europe should take is that the Baltics and Poland were cautious, given their historical understanding of Russia as a political actor, but were not outright fearful of dialogue with Moscow. If Europe shifts its focus to who blocked what talks and actions, it risks falling into the very divisions and tensions that Moscow seeks to foster.