“I consider the words of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as being just as true as the claim that no one protested against Nord Stream,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, commenting on Merkel’s alleged statement blaming Poland for the war in Ukraine.

The comment concerns Merkel’s interview with the Hungarian online channel Partizan, which the German daily Bild titled: “Explosive interview: Merkel blames Poland for Putin’s war.” 

Asked at a press conference about the interpretation of Merkel’s comments, Sikorski replied that he understood them to be “just as true as what she wrote in her memoirs – namely, that no one from Central Europe protested against Nord Stream.”

“Please take a look at how the German government reacted to what I said back in 2007, about how we do not like agreements being made over our heads. It seems the Chancellor forgot how her own government reacted to our protests,” the Foreign Minister added.

In its coverage of the interview, Bild also wrote that the former Chancellor had “blamed Poland and the Baltic states for breaking off diplomatic relations between Russia and the EU, and thereby indirectly for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which began a few months later.” 

In a conversation with a Hungarian journalist available on YouTube, the former CDU leader stated that in June 2021, she had the impression that Putin “no longer took the Minsk Agreement seriously.” 

She added that, for this reason, together with French President Emmanuel Macron, she “wanted a new format” to “speak directly with Putin as the EU.”

Photo: @sjanus_pl

Tomasz Modrzejewski