Merkel Is Half-Right & Half-Wrong About Who’s Responsible For The Ukrainian Conflict

Andrew Korybko 

The US was most responsible for the Ukrainian Conflict by refusing to reach a compromise with Russia for defusing their security dilemma, but Germany deserves as much blame as Poland and the Baltic States, perhaps even more because it was the EU’s de facto leader at the time.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel strongly implied in an interview that Poland and the Baltic States are partially responsible for the Ukrainian Conflict. According to her, “I wanted a new format… back then (in June 2021) where we could talk to Putin directly as the EU. Some [at the European Council] did not support that. They were primarily the Baltic States; but Poland was also against it because they feared that we would not have a common policy towards Russia.” She’s half-right and half-wrong.

What she’s right about is that those four are resolutely opposed to Russia for historical reasons (it’s unimportant whether or not readers believe that those reasons should influence contemporary policy) and would therefore certainly obstruct any proposed EU-Russian dialogue on security matters. Had Germany bilaterally engaged in talks with Russia on this matter or together with a “coalition of the willing” comprised of Western European countries, then that would have further divided the EU.

In that scenario, the US could have taken advantage of this serious rift to deploy more troops and equipment towards Russia’s borders for ruining the abovementioned hypothetical dialogue and provoking Putin into what ultimately became the special operation, which Merkel wanted to avoid. Like many, she underestimated how seriously he considered his country’s security dilemma with NATO to be by that point, ergo why she assumed that he wouldn’t resort to kinetic means in Ukraine for resolving it.

Not only was she wrong about that, but her account dishonestly omits what she boasted about in December 2022 regarding how she always considered Minsk to be a ruse for buying time to strengthen Ukraine’s offensive capabilities ahead of a future all-out attempt to reconquer Donbass. No strategic defeat was ever inflicted on Russia, neither in the aforesaid scenario that the special operation narrowly preempted nor throughout the course of the ongoing conflict, so Merkel is now trying to shift the blame.

Another point is that any fears that Germany and others might have had of the US exploiting an intra-EU rift over a security dialogue with Russia could have been counterbalanced by preventing it from using their territory and airspace for transferring troops and equipment to Poland and the Baltic States. They’d have still probably arrived there somehow even in that event, but the military logistics required for turning what could have been a swift campaign into a war of attrition might not have ever taken shape.

Ultimately, Merkel was looking after what she believed (whether accurately or not) to be German interests, ergo why she capitulated to pressure from Poland and the Baltic States to eschew a security dialogue with Russia so as to not further divide the de facto German-led EU. As it turned out, however, Germany’s leadership of the EU is no longer as solid as it once was due to Poland exploiting the special operation to revive its Great Power status and position itself as the US’ top ally in post-war Europe.

Merkel’s efforts to maintain German leadership of the EU therefore failed, but instead of admitting this, she’s shifting the blame onto the one of the countries whose leadership (which doesn’t mean its people) benefited the most, Poland. The US was most responsible for the Ukrainian Conflict by refusing to reach a compromise with Russia for defusing their security dilemma, but Germany deserves as much blame as Poland and the Baltic States, perhaps even more because it was the EU’s de facto leader at the time.

Andrew Korybko, Substack, October 21, 2025

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