The CDU politician also referred to the political situation at the time: “I would not have had a political majority and certainly no support from the business community for ending the gas trade with Russia.” Merkel rejects the fact that she indirectly contributed to financing Russia’s campaign against Ukraine: “Russia started the war without gas ever flowing through Nord Stream 2. Today other countries are filling Putin’s war chest. That’s how it would have happened back then “If we had severed all economic ties.”
She also considered Nord Stream 2 to be “politically sensible,” Merkel said. “In the new post-Cold War order, how could one maintain ties with someone like Putin, whom some historians call a revisionist? By trying to let him share in the prosperity.”
Although this attempt obviously failed, Merkel wanted to do so loudly Spiegel explicitly not calling the pipeline a mistake: “Because I used all my strength to prevent the situation that has now arisen.” Merkel refers to the Minsk negotiations in 2015, which led to a fragile ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine: “At the time, it didn’t seem sensible to me to say at the same time that we were cutting all economic ties that were also important to Putin.”
