Former German chancellor Angela Merkel called for an open debate on the possibility of ending the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine. Answering journalists' questions at the Leipzig book fair, she said that it was "always important for her not to narrow our horizons," writes ZDF.
Merkel also stressed that one should not "try to shut up" those who, like the former chairman of the Munich International Security Conference Wolfgang Ischinger, say that at some point the parties to the conflict "will have to negotiate." According to her, these people "do not necessarily repeat the narratives of Vladimir Putin."
On April 29, in an interview with Die Zeit, the ex-chancellor said that she tried to prevent a war in Ukraine "using everything" that was at her disposal. The failure of this policy, she said, does not indicate that "it was wrong to try."
At the same time, she refused to speculate about how the war would end, but again stressed the need to find a scenario in which negotiations between the parties to the conflict would be possible. After condemning Russia's attack on Ukraine and calling it a "flagrant violation of international law," Merkel noted that she was repeatedly asked to participate in resolving the situation, but she refused.
In 2015, after the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in the Ukrainian Donbas, Merkel was interested in economic cooperation with Russia. “We are taking step by step to move closer to a common economic space – as Vladimir Putin once said – from Vladivostok to Lisbon,” she said.