Former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel spoke out in 2008 against Ukraine’s membership in NATO, because then it was a “politically divided” country. Also, in her opinion, this would be perceived as a “declaration of war” by the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. She stated this on air with Spiegel journalist Alexander Ozang, reports DW.
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“It was not the Ukraine we know now. It was very divided politically between Yanukovych i Yushchenko. It was not an internally democratically stable country,” she said.
She also believes that Putin would not have allowed Ukraine’s rapprochement with NATO, since he would consider it a “declaration of war.”
“I don’t share his idea at all that the whole West is his enemy, that he is constantly humiliated. But I knew how he thinks, and that he sees it that way. I didn’t want to provoke him,” Merkel said.
Merkel also stressed that her words do not justify Putin’s actions today, but explain her position.
- At the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, it was agreed that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of the Alliance through a membership action plan. But the MAP itself, Kyiv and Tbilisi, on the initiative of France and Germany, did not receive any assurances as to the timing of its submission.
- The third President Yushchenko called “close to evil” positions of France and Germany at the summit in Bucharest.
- After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Merkel said that considers the decision of the Bucharest NATO summit to be correct.
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