The interview is behind a paywall and I’ve not been able to access it to read directly. I’ve read a few articles in English speaking media summarizing a few points from it. Below is Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett’s summary of Alexander Mercouris’ commentary on the interview as it relates to Russia, the Minsk Agreements and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Angela Merkel, former German chancellor, has given an interview with Die Spiegel in which she indicates that had she been in control the crisis would not have taken place. She mentioned her initiative with Macron to get a conversation going between Russia and the EU in 2021. She discovered that the Russians by that time were skeptical and doubtful whether she would be able to deliver on her promises, given that she would not be chancellor for much longer. She was regretful that she ran into opposition from the Baltic States, from Poland, from the Netherlands which made dialog with the Russians impossible. She also talked about the Minsk agreements, which she largely authored, about how by 2021 the Minsk agreement had been hollowed out (Ukraine’s Poroshenko has openly admitted he never intended to honor it anyway) and she indicates she was looking for some form of Minsk III.
Mercouris considers that Merkel lacks understanding of how Russia thinks about these things. He recalls how Macron offended the Russians intensely by telling Putin to forget about Minsk II, to hand the Donbass back to Ukraine, and talk with Zelenskiy. Neither Merkel nor Macron ever understood how giving up on Minsk and letting Zelenkiy off the hook for Ukraine’s egregious failure to implement the peace agreement, poisoned relations with Russia. They seem to have thought that, provided the price was right, Russia could be persuaded to give up the Donbass, despite the clarity with which Russia had told Europe otherwise – reminiscent of the US attitude to the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 when the Americans thought they could get Russia to agree to abandon its support for Assad. Russia insisted that the joint interest was fighting the jihadists.
Merkel’s inability to understand Russia, to take its positions seriously, is critically revealing of Europe’s fateful disdain for its opponent. The West badly underestimates Russian persistence, and maintains wholly flawed misconceptions of the true nature of Russia and Russian institutions.
Link to Mercouris video here. Begins around 49 minute, 50 second mark.
The summary of Alexander’s first paragraph is lightly comforting, but the second is not.
Could no one in Europe put themselves in Russia’s place? World War II revisionist history, like Joyce’s snow upon the Shannon, is now falling upon the living and the dead.
‘Russia could be persuaded to “give up the Donbass”, despite the clarity with which Russia had told Europe otherwise – reminiscent of the US attitude to the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 when the Americans thought they could get Russia to agree to abandon its support for Assad. Russia insisted that the joint interest was fighting the jihadists.’
One quibble to an otherwise good summary, Russia did not claim the Donbass at that time, what was being asked of Russia was to “sell out the people of the Donbass”, i.e.: to be ethnically cleansed/genocided.
Macron and Merkell have done this in the past (to the people in Libya and the Sahel for example) so I think they were confused and could not wrap their narrow minds around the idea that Russia would not allow an all-out genocide of fellow Russian Slavs for a temporary gain, this sort of moral calculus was and is beyond most Western European political leaders.
Excellent and helpful clarification on the Donbass point Mr. Hatch. The summary lacked clarity on that matter, whereas Mercouris has been clear that Russia supported a degree of autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk, with guarantees for language and cultural rights, within a Ukrainian federation, since the Maidan coup. This goal changed when Ukraine’s actions made it clear that the Minsk accord’s terms would never be honored and massing of Uk troops and equipment on the border of the rebel areas indicated that genocidal military action was imminent. Hence the declaration of independence by these two oblasts, followed by official Russian recognition of the two new republics and subsequent referenda and annexation.