In Lithuania Criticized Merkel For Justifying Putin

• 7.10.2025, 10:28

Lithuanian Seimas deputies gave their assessment.

Lithuanian Seimas deputies have reacted to the words of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who linked Poland and the Baltic states' resistance to direct contact with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his decision to invade Ukraine in 2022.

This is reported by LRT.

What preceded

Merkel recently said that in 2021, together with Emmanuel Macron, she wanted to organize European Union talks with Putin. However, this was then allegedly opposed by the Baltic States and Poland.

"In any case, it didn't happen. Then I left my position, and then Putin's aggression started," Merkel said.

Lithuanian reaction

The chairman of the Seimas Foreign Affairs Committee, Social Democrat Remigijus Motuzas, said Merkel's statements could not be considered an official German position. He said relations between Europe and Russia were strained long before 2021.

"Crimea was occupied in 2014, and in fact from 2015 until the war in Ukraine in 2022, relations with Russia were already strained.... The Minsk agreements were not signed, it was Russia that derailed them, blocked them and did not agree with some positions," the lawmaker said.

"However, he agreed that for a long time the positions of Western European states and Eastern EU states towards Russia diverged.

"Some European Union states probably still hoped that Russia would have an epiphany and did not expect this full-scale invasion. They were still hoping, and you can probably infer from that, that back in 2015 the same Germany signed the Nord Stream-2 pipeline agreement with Russia," Motuzas said.

And conservative Zygimantas Pavilionis said Merkel is indulging Putin.

"Merkel represents a long tradition of indulging Putin, thanks to which Russian tanks are now in both Georgia and Ukraine. And if this line were to continue today, I am afraid that they (Russian tanks - ed.) would end up somewhere on the way to Berlin and on our territory," he said.

He also links such statements by Merkel to Germany's domestic politics. After all, the current German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is having a hard time implementing a new foreign policy - his ratings have fallen, so Merkel is taking advantage of this situation.

"I think she is now trying to raise a wave of these Russia lovers, Putin connoisseurs against Merz," he said.