Germany’s Angela Merkel recalls tricky dealings with world leaders from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin during her 16-year chancellorship in her frank memoirs, published as her legacy comes under intense scrutiny.
Here are some quotes from “Freedom: Memories 1954-2021” according to extracts released in Die Zeit weekly before next week’s official publication:
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN
“Someone who was always on his guard to avoid being treated badly and always ready to dish it out, including power games with dogs and making others wait for him. You could find all this childish, reprehensible. You could shake your head at it. But it didn’t take Russia off the map.”
“He was not interested in building democratic structures or prosperity for a well-functioning economy in his country or elsewhere. Rather, he wanted to counter the fact that the United States had emerged victorious from the Cold War. He wanted Russia to remain an indispensable pole in a multipolar world after the end of the Cold War. To achieve this, he primarily drew on his experience in the security services.”
WRANGLING OVER UKRAINE AT NATO SUMMIT IN BUCHAREST, 2008:
“I thought it was an illusion to assume that the Membership Action Plan (MAP) status would have given Ukraine and Georgia protection from Putin’s aggression, that this status would have had a deterrent effect to the extent that Putin would have accepted the developments without doing anything.
“Would it have been conceivable that NATO member states would have responded militarily – with material as well as troops – and intervened? Would it have been conceivable that I, as Federal Chancellor, would have asked the German Bundestag for such a mandate for our Bundeswehr as well and would have received a majority in favour?”
“In another context, which I no longer remember in detail
he (Putin) later said to me: “You won’t be Chancellor forever. And then they’ll become a member of NATO. And I want to prevent that.” And I thought: You won’t be president forever either. Nevertheless, my worries about future tensions with Russia in Bucharest had not diminished.”
ON DONALD TRUMP
“He saw everything from the perspective of the property developer he was before entering politics. Each parcel of land could only be sold once, and if he didn’t get it someone else did. That’s how he saw the world.”
“For years, the many German cars on the streets of New York had been a thorn in his side. That Americans were buying them could, in his opinion, only be due to dumping prices and alleged exchange rate manipulation between the euro and the dollar.”
She wrote how Trump did not shake her hand for photographers at a White House meeting in 2017 even after she whispered to him that they should. “As soon as I said that, I shook my head inwardly at myself. How could I have forgotten that Trump knew exactly what effect he wanted to achieve.”
“He was obviously very fascinated by the Russian president. In the years that followed I had the impression that politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits captivated him.
“We talked on two different levels. Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one. For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other. He did not believe that co-operation could increase the prosperity of all.”
CHILDHOOD AND LIFE IN COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY:
“Life in the GDR was a constant life on the edge. Even if a day began in a carefree manner, everything could change in a matter of seconds if political boundaries were transgressed… the state knew no mercy. Finding out exactly where these boundaries lay was the real art of living. My somewhat conciliatory character and my pragmatic approach helped me.”
She described a sense of superiority “because, despite everything, this state did not manage to deprive me of something that made me live, feel and sense: a certain degree of carefreeness.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Ukraine on August 22, spokesperson of the Ukrainian President Serhiy Nykyforov has said.
“The Federal Chancellor of Germany, Mrs. Angela Merkel, intends to visit Ukraine on August 22. The topics of the talks: security, bilateral relations and other topical issues,” Nykyforov said on Facebook.
German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel is pleased with the resumption of the work of the Normandy format in the framework of the Minsk process.
“I am glad that we are resuming the work in the Normandy format in the framework of the Minsk process,” Merkel said at a joint briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin on Tuesday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was not as critical as Kyiv about the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and was in favor of Ukraine preserving its transit role after 2019. “We know that Ukraine is against this project. I am less critical about the project and I am in favor of Ukraine having guarantees, that Ukraine will preserve its transit role,” she said at a meeting with the Ukrainian parliament speaker, Andriy Parubiy, and the heads of parliamentary groups in Kyiv.
She noted that the negotiations on Nord Stream 2 are being conducted with both Russia and the European Commission. “The matter concerns creating a transit agreement. We want Ukraine to remain an important transit country,” Merkel emphasized. The chancellor noted that in addition to Nord Stream there is also TurkStream. “Thus, gas flows are expanding from Russia to the European Union, but this does not mean that we want to reject the transit role of Ukraine. I think that gas transit revenues are extremely important for the budget of Ukraine,” she said.
Merkel noted that Berlin “very seriously” considers the strategic opinion of Ukraine on the issue of Nord Stream 2. “We want to see Ukraine as a partner with respect to transit,” she said.
Prior to this, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy called on Merkel to study in more detail the arguments of Ukraine against the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
“The construction of Nord Stream 2 could bring imbalance and threaten the security of not only Ukraine but the entire European space. And this is the position of the Ukrainian parliament. I would ask that the arguments of the Ukrainian side be studied more in detail,” Parubiy said during a meeting with the German chancellor in Kyiv.
The speaker called for supporting the position of the Ukrainian parliament on the Nord Stream 2 issue.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel have discussed during a telephone conversation the agenda of the chancellor’s visit to Ukraine this autumn. “The sides discussed the agenda of Angela Merkel’s visit to Ukraine, which will be made this autumn,” the press service of the head of state reported. The parties also discussed the situation in Donbas, the prospects for continuing sanctions against Russia and the issues of the bilateral agenda, including energy security. In late August, Poroshenko said at a meeting with the heads of foreign diplomatic institutions of Ukraine that Merkel would pay a visit to Ukraine in early November this year.