On 7th December, the German newspaper Die Zeit published an interview with Angela Merkel in which she discussed her political legacy, including the Minsk agreements. These were peace deals between Ukraine the Russian-backed separatists brokered by herself and Francois Hollande in 2014/2015.
In the interview, Merkel said something that has attracted widespread attention, prompting responses from several world leaders: “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time.”
This, along with some of her other comments, has been interpreted as meaning that Merkel never intended to make peace between Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatists; she only wanted to give Ukraine time to build up its armed forces and prepare for a larger conflict.
Referring to Merkel’s comments, Vladimir Putin said, “It was absolutely unexpected for me. It’s disappointing … Trust almost dropped to zero.” This only shows, he went on to say, “that launching the SMO [Special Military Operation] was the right decision”.
Likewise, the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said, “Merkel’s statement is something that dramatically changes the state of things … If they could play like that with someone who is much stronger than us, so lie and deceive a country like the Russian Federation … it changes a lot for me.”
However, if you read all of what she said in the interview, it becomes clear that Merkel’s statement has been taken out of context.
Crucially, she begins by saying:
Let’s look at my policy towards Russia and Ukraine. I come to the conclusion that I made the decisions I made back then in a way that I can understand today. It was an attempt to prevent just such a war. The fact that this was not successful does not mean that the attempts were wrong.
Her interviewer responds, “But you can still find plausible how you acted in earlier circumstances and still consider it wrong today in view of the results.”
Merkel then says:
But that presupposes also saying what exactly the alternatives were at the time. I thought the initiation of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia discussed in 2008 to be wrong … the consequences of such a decision [had not] been fully considered … And the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time.
Her interviewer responds, “The aim was to gain time with a ceasefire in order to later come to a peace between Russia and Ukraine.”
Merkel then says:
It also used this time to get stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltseve in early 2015, Putin could easily have overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine.
So Merkel begins by stating that her policy towards Russia and Ukraine was an “attempt to prevent … war”. She then mentions that the first Minsk agreement was an “attempt to give Ukraine time,” which her interviewer interprets to mean “time with a ceasefire in order to later come to a peace between Russia and Ukraine”.
Merkel adds that Ukraine “also used this time to get stronger”. The use of “also” suggests she meant that the agreement had two effects: stopping the fighting long enough to broker a lasting peace deal; and allowing Ukraine to get stronger in the interim. She didn’t say it was purely a way of giving Ukraine time to prepare for a larger conflict.
Her comment that Ukraine “used this time to get stronger” could still be seen as gaffe, given how it has been deployed in the media by pro-Russian commentators. Perhaps it would have been prudent of her to refrain from giving them ammunition at such a diplomatically sensitive time.
Indeed, she may have said it for self-serving reasons – to make her own past decisions look more favourable to Ukraine. Recall that Petro Poroshenko, the former Ukrainian President, has repeatedly justified his decision to sign the second Minsk agreement using the same line of argument.
There’s another reason to doubt that Merkel never intended to make peace: if she knew a larger conflict was coming, why did she go ahead with Nord Stream 2? Later in the interview, Merkel states that refusing to proceed with the pipeline in “combination with the Minsk agreement” would have “dangerously worsened the climate with Russia”. This again suggests she believed that peace was possible.
It’s also worth noting that in a November interview with Der Speigel, Merkel said she had “wanted to establish an independent European discussion format with Putin again” in the summer of 2021. Though her efforts went nowhere “because everyone knew [she] would be gone in the fall.”
Whether the Minsk agreements could have prevented war is a matter for debate. But the claim that Merkel only ever saw them as a way of delaying war is not supported by her recent comments.
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This is where the rhetoric around unvaccinated people is going. Every day I am reminded of that Mitchell and Webb “are we the baddies?” sketch.
In Perpignan there are now a bunch of vigilantes blocking off a shopping street and demanding to see if you are vaccinated.
We all know where this is going to go. Dehumanisation of a minority group has a 100% track record in terms of outcome.
It’s more or less what our government, led by that well-known closet libertarian and lockdown sceptic Alexander “Boris” Johnson, beloved victim of nasty SAGE bullies, is saying.
I still beg to differ here: That’s Boris the Absent, who, after taking the UK out of the EU common market to ensure that London-based hedgefonds will remain forever free from the threat of EU-wide taxation, happily delegates actually governing the country to a group of foreign experts (WHO) and their domestic lickspittles (SAGE et. al.), provided he can keep his title and doesn’t have to do anything himself (save the occasional press statement).
Definitely, Kim Jong Johnson has been bullied into becoming a great fat communist fraud instead of the libertarian he is.
Actually King Kong Johnson.
LOL – its all about saving lives for this guy
At least Duterte doesn’t pretend to be other than an evil (and ignorant) fascist.
That’s sort of the point I was making below, in a roundabout way. I don’t really care what he’s saying, I care about our government here much more, who are doing the same thing, with more subtlety (but not much).
he’s a least honest, boris and his health Junta aren’t even honest about their desire to show they own the people of the country.
And he will end up hanging from a tree, like all fascists.
If I could just go over to the Philippines with a firearm and kill this evil fascist mother fucker!
Nice one Rodders, why don’t you house arrest people with heart disease (99,680) and chronic lower respiratory infections (19,463) total: 119,143
Covid-19 deaths 8,209
Keep diabetes, its a good earner for Big Pharma, wouldn’t want a visit by the Coca-Cola company now would we…
Yes. You have to ask whether he’s just plain stupid or is weighed down by his pockets… or maybe both.
Duterte is the likes of Piers Morgan and Michael Gove without the PR mask on.
These leaders on some affiliate marketing scheme from Big Pharma.
What do Piers, Gove and Duterte all have in common? (I could add more of course)
That’s right – I wish they’d all succumb to the same fate that Duterte wishes for the unvaxxed.
And so it begins.
“Kill people, save lives”.
We killed the people we falsely claimed were at most risk from the virus to save people at risk from the virus.
Dirty Duterte has been killing people for years.
“Duterte said “walking spreaders” should be confined to their homes.”
That’s the people who been jabbed, then!
Charming!
What we need is to return to a policy of DENAZIFICATION.
LOL! He’s really going to blow his top when he finds out that the vaccine doesn’t reduce the spread of the delta variant.
No he won’t, he knows and doesn’t care. It’s about CONTROL.
He wouldn’t listen to blasphemy like that.
Probably not. The Philipines are a former US colony (took it from Spain) and the government of this guy is very probably absolutely dependent on money from the USA. Hence, this is about pleasing the people who pay him.
Great. He’s made a firm and undeniable statement of his position.
Walking spreaders should be confined to their homes.
So, if evidence emerges that vaccinated-infected also spread covid as much as unvaccined-infected then the vaccinated should also remain in their homes.
I’d say that it might be better to form policy based on symptoms. There’s fairly good evidence that significant viral shedding in the asymptomatic-infected-unvaccinated is relatively rare, so really they should only force the unvaccinated with covid symptoms to stay in their homes. Unvaccinated without symptoms are unlikely to be spreaders.
There’s also emerging evidence that asymptomatic-infected-vaccinated do spread covid, due to them having rather surprisingly high viral loads. Thus he should force the vaccinated to stay in their homes unless they have a recent negative test.
Of course all the above is irrelevant — their president isn’t working with science or logic, but is just propagating the usual scientific illiteracy, that the only way out of this is with mass vaccination. They’re only making things worse, but they’re doing it anyway.
It was always thus.
The pandemic would long be over and had taken a much more benign toll, if anyone feeling sick just stayed home, especially if taking painkillers.
But that wouldn’t have served the agenda.
TBH, anyone with a cold or flu should stay at home until they are better, pandemic or no pandemic. It is just a common curtesy. Nothing annoys me more than people who insist on coming into the office with a cold or using public transport etc when they are under the weather and giving their germs to everyone else. Incidentally, such people thought nothing about the consequences of spreading disease and potentially killing granny prior to all the Covid hysteria.
For some people though it’s the difference between being paid or not, or even of keeping their jobs at all. Of course everyone would like some R&R when they’re under the weather but it’s not always feasible.
I can understand that position, but on the other hand I also respect the position that says mere colds should not be allowed to get in the way of getting the job done.
As far as the “greater good” is concerned, the effectiveness of our immune systems and the delicate balance with endemic seasonal viruses depend on rapid and regular spreading of these bugs through society.
Nah! What’s in a bloody cold for God’s sake? We all used to go into work with a cold. In fact if someone called in and said they were taking the day off because they had a cold everyone thought they were being a bit wet.
Nowadays no doubt if anyone sneezes the rest panic and hide away waiting for death to come riding over the hill. It’s pathetic, come on get grip.
This is going to result in civil war. Especially when the vaxxed start dying including, hopefully, Duterte himself.
He won’t have had the jabs!
He had the Sinopharm, it was a battle to get him to do it on TV, he didn’t want to do it.
I doubt it – probably saline solution or a vitamin B shot.
So isn’t that the most useless of all the useless “vaccines”?
I have staff in The Philippines
Vote for a psychopath, get a psychopath
Is that Grant Shapps?
Philippines population: 109 million. So 7 million people are going to run the entire country and 102 million people are under permanent house arrest?
Most likely there will be a remarkably rapid (and remarkably implausible) spread of “vaccinations” and certification “proving” such, through the country.
Just another tax.
Obviously he didn’t get the memo about the vaccines not stopping infection.
I work in the Philippines and have lived here for almost a year. Here in Metro Manila, we’re about to re-enter our second hard lockdown this year due to the so-called “delta” variant, which I’m sure will last until October even though they say it’s only supposed to be until August 20. This type of language is pretty common from the president, and it’s hard to imagine anyone taking this seriously.
In fact, it’s hard to take anything the government says here seriously, because most of the time the government doesn’t even know what’s going on. The palace spokesperson will say something one day, and then it takes the media and the government a couple of days to figure out who said what, if it’s true or not, if they can move forward with it, etc., etc. As the article says–and this may be something of a saving grace–the vaccine rollout here has been an absolute catastrophe, and the government is pretty much dependent on vaccine charity at this point. Therefore, I wonder what planet Mr. President is living on threatening to lock vaccine refusers in their homes when the government can barely manage to get 15% of its population fully vaccinated after 7 months. The authorities can’t even manage a unified track-and-trace system (thank God for that), let alone issuing everyone a national ID card. On top of that, many Filipinos still have fresh memories of the disastrous dengue vaccine campaign some years ago, and most of them are devout Catholics.
But then again, nothing surprises me these days.
Fascinating insight. If you have time please consider submitting a postcard from Manila. The Daily Sceptic site has many from around the world. When we look back and read all these, the farce and the top down multinational media control will be apparent.
Published one on LS back in February, maybe I should write an update!
Now would certainly be timely, in view of the above.
I’d be particularly interested in the interaction between the kind of totalitarian pomposity and thuggery displayed by Duterte above and the street reality of a state in which relatively few have access to the vaccines anyway.
Please keep us posted!
A great reminder that one of the best defences against tyranny is an incompetent government bureaucracy.
Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York yesterday said that they are ‘done’ being nice to people who haven’t had the jab. We asked you nicely and you didn’t do it do now it’s time for mandates.
I’ve been watching our ministers for a while now. They make sure that they leave a verbal trail of ‘nice’ so that they can say they bent over backwards. We told you the jab was free, we came to your area, we did pop up clinics, we provided education and reassurance and still you didn’t. We’ve ticked all the boxes our government lawyers told us to before we do what we were always planning.
I he getting likes on Twatter from the bed wetters?
Well well, the hysteria has gone way too far, but then politicians are just as easily brainwashed as anyone else.
President TooDirty is an absolute bell-end. But he also seems to be a thoroughly nasty nutjob. Just the latest in a string of outrageous statements he’s made over the last few years.
I saw a documentary at a film festival, those were the days, about the death squads targeting drug users in the Philippines. So it is strange that Duterte actually wants people to inject.
I don’t care a bit if Dutertre dies. In fact, I’d give three hearty cheers.
This man, along with Dan Andrews (Kim-Jong Dan), St Jacinda (the “toothy tyrant” of NZ) and all the other tyrannical power abusers of the pandemic should be confined to a lunatic asylum on an island in the middle of the Pacific, isolated and out of harms way, and the world would instantly be a better place.
Probably send along Chris Whitty and Patrick Valance too. Oh, and bring a friend, like perhaps Neil Ferguson.
All will be watched in their padded rooms by orderlies in white coats, while some draw up plans for world domination, while others keep occupied scribbling insane models and predictions on the wall, letting out the occasional squawk or cackling laughter.
Once a day they’re let out on a leash while they run back and forth, crazy eyed and screaming “the unvaccinated must die, they must die!”
Enjoy your fantasy.
Most of your fellow countrymen are standing around clapping them.
What, they’re clapping President Duterte of the Philippines are they, for encouraging the death of his citizens?
Leftists must be getting seizures from the cognitive dissonance this produces.
On the one hand, it’s Duterte whom they consider a fascist sub-human just half a notch above Trump.
On the other hand, he comes out as the most rabidly pro corona vax person on the planet.
How to reconcile these two things…
Coming to a nation near you
Fuck you Duerte! I hope you get assassinated and killed in response to your comments! and I hope all those over in Philippines going along with this hate and evil against the unvaccinated end up dead as well!
Another bought politician. The question is…..who bought him? I think we all know.
How the ***k did he become a president? This man is a despot
I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to describe this disgusting piece of shit.