{"id":16457,"date":"2026-05-18T14:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T14:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/16457\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T14:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T14:10:09","slug":"germanys-merkel-criticizes-eu-for-not-talking-to-russia-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/16457\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merkel criticizes EU for not talking to Russia \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pressure is building <\/a>on Europe<\/a> 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\u2019s negotiating team is squarely focused on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.<\/p>\n

Merkel, who served as Germany\u2019s chancellor from 2005 to 2021, said she had proposed establishing a diplomatic format between the EU and Russia during her last European Council meeting<\/a> in October 2021 at the end of her tenure \u2014 four months before Russia\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to keep working on it until you reach a common position,\u201d she said about differences within the bloc. \u201cDiplomacy has always been the other side of the coin, also during the Cold War.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merkel\u2019s legacy has come under scrutiny in recent years over Germany\u2019s increased dependence on Russian gas during her tenure, with criticism mounting since the start of Moscow\u2019s full-scale attack on Ukraine four years ago.<\/p>\n

But her past negotiating experience with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also led to Merkel\u2019s name being floated<\/a> as one of the possible candidates for becoming the EU\u2019s peace envoy to help resolve the conflict.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were only able to hold those [negotiations] with President Putin because we had political power, because we were heads of government,\u201d Merkel said. \u201cYou need that power. And I, personally, would never have thought of asking a mediator to go to Minsk for me and talk to Putin \u2026 You have to take that into your own hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Minsk agreements \u2014 brokered by Merkel and her French counterpart in 2014 and 2015 to halt the fighting in eastern Ukraine \u2014 failed to secure a lasting ceasefire. Violations continued for years before Russia\u2019s total war kicked off in 2022. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pressure is building on Europe to appoint a special envoy for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2696,502,5,1459,3625,1831,774,1801,4558,409,484],"class_list":["post-16457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-angela-merkel","tag-diplomacy","tag-germany","tag-kremlin","tag-negotiations","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}