“I left office, and the aggression of Putin began,” former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a recent interview. Merkel told the Hungarian outlet Partizán that by mid-2021, she thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was no longer serious about the so-called Minsk Agreements, peace deals meant to stop the fighting in eastern Ukraine. She said she wanted to push for a new round of talks with herself, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Putin. But, Merkel says, Poland and the Baltic states opposed the idea. Merkel implies that their action shut down a chance for diplomacy.

It is striking that after all that transpired under Merkel’s leadership and the catastrophe that followed, the former chancellor remains unwilling to recognize her own mistakes.